
Tumblr Is On Fire. Now Over 6 Million Users, 1.5 Billion Pageviews A Month - spencerfry
http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/19/tumblr-stats/
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pierrefar
These are awesome numbers. Posterous' dying platforms campaign looks ever more
lame now.

~~~
hop
I've switched from wordpress to posterous to tumblr. I like Tumblr's lack of
branded drop down button that Posterous has even on self hosted, custom
themes. Photographer Terry's Diary is a minimal Tumblr powered blog thats
pretty interesting - <http://www.terrysdiary.com> (mildly NSFW)

~~~
sachinag
Wait - I see two buttons on all Tumblr sites: one that says "+ Follow" and one
that says "Join Tumblr". Is this something that I'm in a bucket test on or
does it go away if you're logged or something?

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croby
The Tumblr blog owner can choose to show that or not

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edash
If you're a Tumblr user you'll see two buttons in the upper right-hand corner
on every Tumblr blog - regardless of any change of settings.

This isn't meant for advertising though (these are existing users after all).
Those two buttons allow you to:

    
    
      a) Follow that Tumblr (like RSS)
      b) Go to your Tumblr Dashboard

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maxklein
All these other blogging services sometimes forget the basics: People write
because they want to be appreciated. Tumblr has very good 'appreciation' and
'feel good' triggers in there. So it grows.

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KevinMS
I'm still trying to figure out this "quick blogging" phenomenon (and
microblogging also), having no desire or apparently no inclination to do
either of them.

I looked around the tumblr directory at some blogs and I didn't find anything
that wasn't just glossy regurgitated content. Not one held my attention for
even a second.

Anyway this article helped me out understanding tumblr (and how it contrasts
with posterous)

[http://arstechnica.com/business/reviews/2010/02/tumblr-vs-
po...](http://arstechnica.com/business/reviews/2010/02/tumblr-vs-posterous-
quick-blogging-showdown.ars)

Someday soon I'll need to do a little blogging. Can anybody recommend
something easy to use but not so gimmicky as tumblr or posterous? I'll
probably want a nice way to format code, and probably a comment section. I'm a
developer and not afraid to get my hands dirty but I'd rather have something
self hosted because I'm not interested a potential cracking vulnerability I'd
get hosting my own.

~~~
pierrefar
Wordpress can be as basic as you want (just text posts in reverse
chronological order) and can be enhanced with plugins.

Host it yourself: wordpress.org. Have it hosted for you: wordpress.com.

For any hosted blog, I'd put it on a domain or subdomain you own so that if
you do decide to move later, you control it 100%.

~~~
defen
If you're going with self-hosted Wordpress, I'd also recommend putting it on a
separate machine and ideally on a separate network from your other machines,
so that they aren't compromised when your blog gets hacked.

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spoiledtechie
Ive always wondered, how do they bring in revenue? Do they at all? I currently
use at least 4 tumblr blogs and Im not paying them so where is the money going
to be made up after they run out of funding?

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kloncks
From their Terms of Services:

Some of the Services require payment of fees. Subscriber shall pay all
applicable fees, as described on the Site in connection with such Services
selected by Subscriber. Tumblr reserves the right to change its pricing and to
institute new charges at any time, upon ten (10) days prior notice to
Subscriber, which will be posted on the Site and e-mailed to Subscriber along
with a link to the modified fee schedule so that you can review it. Use of the
Services by Subscriber following such notification constitutes Subscriber's
acceptance of any new or increased charges.

\--------------

Or, it could just be that they're making money by raising it from VCs.

~~~
edash
Tumblr actually built out a feature set that was to be called "Tumblr Plus"
ala Vimeo. This included group blogs and many other features that have since
been released in the past year.

Ultimately, Tumblr's venture capitalists (including Fred Wilson) encouraged
them to release those features as part of the free product and continue to
focus on growth rather than monetization.

"Wilson added that 'some businesses should be allowed to scale and that takes
capital — going for revenues and profits too early in some businesses is a
mistake.'"

[http://gigaom.com/2010/04/20/tumblr-gets-more-money-now-
it-j...](http://gigaom.com/2010/04/20/tumblr-gets-more-money-now-it-just-has-
to-make-some/)

~~~
pclark
minor semantics, but I believe Karp decided it was best to focus on growth
over revenue.

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epi0Bauqu
How much is porn? Not criticizing, just wondering...

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Alex3917
For what it's worth, I posted a little analysis of the platform about eight
months ago that I think still holds pretty well today:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=961523>

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ashishbharthi
Compete comparison for Tumblr vs Posterous vs Wordpress

[http://siteanalytics.compete.com/tumblr.com+posterous.com+wo...](http://siteanalytics.compete.com/tumblr.com+posterous.com+wordpress.com/)

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atlbeer
1.5b page views = ? revenue?

What is their revenue model?

~~~
jrockway
Suing Posterous for calling them dead.

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jonpaul
I love Tumblr!

1) It's free.

2) I can edit the HTML.

3) It supports Disqus.

4) Default themes are awesome.

5) Custom domain support is free.

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there
but is becoming a new "home for trolls" if we're to believe gawker

[http://gawker.com/5589103/how-the-internet-beat-up-
an-11+yea...](http://gawker.com/5589103/how-the-internet-beat-up-
an-11+year+old-girl?skyline=true&s=i)

~~~
jacquesm
To some extent that validates a medium. If you don't have trolls you ought to
be really worried.

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byoung2
Does anyone know what kind of architecture Tumblr uses to serve up that
traffic?

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sync
Squid static page caching helps them a lot, I'm sure.

S3 for image serving.

Backend is written in PHP, IIRC.

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arnorhs
IIRC? What's that?

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aaronz3
if I recall correctly

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oziumjinx
If i rewind correctly

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c1sc0
That's all fine, but when will the Dashboard get decent loading times? I know
you're supposed to be a cool kid & email your blog entries, but I don't like
what that does with line breaks.

~~~
madh
I'd like to see a nicer way to read followed blogs. The Dashboard bundles
everything together, and each site loses its design and identity (which a big
part of what makes Tumblr great).

Maybe they'll do something like they've done with the Archive view (e.g.,
<http://staff.tumblr.com/archive>) or the Mega-Editor (e.g.,
<http://www.tumblr.com/mega-editor> if you have Tumblr log).

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klous
I've noticed a trend where some high traffic blogs have trouble keeping the
lights on and are switching over to tumblr for their bandwidth capabilities
and collaboration capabilities.

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niccolop
It would be great to compare that number to the other big blogs: wordpress,
blogger, sixapart, livejournal, posterous, etc.

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ck2
Maybe that has something to do with them finally adding oauth support

<http://staff.tumblr.com/post/806396160/oauth>

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edash
Yup, in the 6 days since the blog post you cite, they've grown by hundreds of
millions of monthly page views...fueled entirely by their announced support of
Oauth.

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ck2
LOL, sorry I said that badly.

What I meant was the opposite - their massive growth encouraged them to
finally add oauth support.

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pavs
Would be nice to know Wordpress numbers too.

