

Tumblr Falls Into a Really Big Pile of Money - kmfrk
http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20101119/tumblr-falls-into-a-really-big-pile-of-money/

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JabavuAdams
> Best I can tell, the real appeal for Tumblr is its go-go growth, and the
> fact that it’s doing it on a very light footprint.

So, why do they need all that money?

It's bizarre that there are companies testing and flying rocket-planes and
VTOL sub-orbital rockets with much less funding than this.

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CoachRufus87
Perhaps it was one of those rounds where early employees could take some cash
off the table?

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nhangen
Valuation at 135 million...really?

I love Tumblr, but they've not only failed to monetize well, but the few cases
in which they have are rather lackluster. Their theme marketplace is a bit of
a joke, and they are virtually identical to Posterous.

I realize Tumblr struck first, but if it's that easy to duplicate your
business, then how valuable is it?

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rorymarinich
What's funny is that I simultaneously agree with you and think you're missing
the point.

Tumblr has done an awful job of monetizing. I'm pretty sure the team doesn't
give much of a shit about monetizing, because they seem pretty damn happy with
their site as-is and every monetization attempt of theirs has been something
ephemeral and community-focused. The only one that's been long-lasting is
their Theme Garden, which is poorly-designed and, I suspect, not very
successful, mainly because Tumblr's primary audience is looking for a free,
well-designed way to express themselves, and sees no reason to pay $49 for a
pretty theme.

But at the same time, Tumblr is immensely valuable, because it's becoming the
go-to community for bored youth. Name a single community more geared at your
average (non-techy) youngster. The only one I can think of is LiveJournal, and
LiveJournal is not sexy. Tumblr is sexy. It is surprisingly intelligent
considering how sexy it is, but it is not a web site used by people carefully
calculating features and userbases; it is a web site used by people who like
web sites to look and act sexy. (Sometimes I feel frustrated at Tumblr because
of this; it's not really worth it. Nothing wrong with people who'd rather be
sexy than smart.)

Posterous has more features than Muscle Milk has nutrients, and Garry Tan (the
only Posterous staffer I've talked to) is a superbly bright and kind person
who spends way more time answering inane emails than a successful person ought
to, so I like Posterous, but it is not a sexy site. "Sexy" isn't something you
usually put on bullet point lists, but it's super-duper important, and it's
very difficult to design for. Actually, I think there's a case study in design
right here: The more features you place somewhere, the harder it is to make it
sexy. Tumblr is very good at adding features and maintaining their inner sexy.
Not just in how they _look_ but in how they _feel_ \- I've never felt a site
that makes posting new content feel as rewarding as Tumblr does. (Second
place: Facebook, distantly; they used to be better at this.)

It's valuable because a significant portion of youth worldwide are addicted to
it. If I'm launching a new product (whether it's "internet service" or "TV
show" or "me trying to be clever in a blog") I'm going to pick Tumblr over
Posterous, because what I want isn't a set of features that make my job easy,
what I want is easy connections to an enormous market that might latch on to
me and make me popular/viral/book deal/whatever.

(By the way, the theme marketplace is pretty poor, but the theme garden is one
of the highest-quality purveyor of themes you can get for any blog engine. I
wish Wordpress or ExpressionEngine or Drupal had themes that consistently
sexy. But I'm admittedly biased: something like 40,000 people use my old
Tumblr themes.)

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nhangen
You're absolutely right that Tumblr is sexy. In fact, that's why I prefer it
over Posterous. That being said, I'd be curious to see how many of these blogs
are abandoned within a week, or even a few months?

I know that I have 10 Tumblr blogs, each of which I forget about after a few
weeks, and I'm a tech-geek.

I love the simplicity of Tumblr, and it's a great service, but I just don't
see how they can come out ahead unless they get better at monetizing. I get
that they aren't focused on it, but shouldn't they get some practice?

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rorymarinich
My bet? Probably most of them. But that's only because almost every service is
abandoned by most of its initial users. I set up a site once where literally
the instant you made an account you were adding content; you typed your name,
hit enter, and then filled out a profile field. Still this led to a great deal
of blank profiles.

Probably if their goal is to make a load of money they should start figuring
things out. I don't know if that's their priority, though; they seem to enjoy
being Internet superstars. Hopefully they'll hit on a wonderful profit plan,
but really, no hurry. Plenty of companies have spent excessively long times
getting profitable but they've pulled through anyway.

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donohoe
Tumble is 10 to 15 people with billions of page views. They could choose to be
profitable tomorrow with one google ad on the dashboard. Definitely a company
to watch...

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Zakuzaa
Yep, wordpress.com has been doing the same.

Edit: but wp puts ads below the posts not the dashboard.

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pclark
Wordpress has 70+ employees i think.

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pavs
horrible writing.

