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Tumblr is a social media platform used for microblogging. This means people can create short blogs to share many things.

Tumblr Wordmark
Tumblr Wordmark

Users can post text, images, videos, and even quotes. One of the main tools is called a dashboard. The dashboard is a live feed of recent posts from blogs you follow. You can use it to like or comment on posts. You can also reblog things to share them with your own followers. This makes it a very social place to find new content.

There are many ways to organize and find things on the site. Users use tags to help others find specific topics. A tag is a word starting with a hashtag, like #art. The site indexes the first 20 tags on a post. People use descriptive tags to say what is in a photo. Some users also use tags for personal commentary or opinions. This lets them share thoughts without changing the original post.

Tumblr blog post on an informational screen inside of an NS train, Utrecht Central Station (2019) 02
Tumblr blog post on an informational screen inside of an NS train, Utrecht Central Station (2019) 02

You can also set a queue to schedule posts for later.

David Karp started Tumblr in 2007. He worked with a developer named Marco Arment to build it. They wanted to create a place for short-form blogs. Within two weeks of launching, the site had 75,000 users. In 2012, the brand Adidas worked with Tumblr for an advertising campaign. Later, Yahoo! bought the company in 2013. They paid $1.1 billion in cash for the service. This was a huge moment in the history of the platform.

Ownership of Tumblr has changed several times over the years. After Yahoo!, the company Verizon Communications took over in 2017. During this time, the site faced some hard jobs. In 2019, Tumblr introduced stricter rules for adult content. This caused a drop in user traffic. In August 2019, a company called Automattic bought Tumblr. The sale price was less than $3 million. This was much less than the original price Yahoo! paid.

AOL 770
AOL 770

Automattic also runs the blog service WordPress.com.

Today, Tumblr continues to grow and change with new technology. Many users belong to Generation Z. In fact, they make up 61% of new users. The company is working on using a protocol called ActivityPub. This is a way for different social networks to talk to each other. Automattic is also moving the site to a new backend architecture. They say this will help them share code with WordPress.com. Users should not notice a big difference in how the site looks.

Tumblr Wordmark
Tumblr Wordmark
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