

Tumblr Doesn't Leave Posterous in the Dust - webwright
http://www.tonywright.com/2010/tumblr-doesnt-leave-posterous-in-the-dust-or-why-facebook-is-scared-of-twitter/

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ugh
Either I’m not getting it or he didn’t change the graph correctly. The light
blue line are tumblr’s US visitors (green are tumblr’s global visitors). Why
did he shift that line? And why only tumblr’s US numbers, not global?

The two dark blue lines are Posterous’s visitors (again, US and global) and
they are always less than tumblr’s, all the time. Shifting doesn’t seem to
change anything.

Here is the graph with labels:
[http://www.quantcast.com/profile/trafficGraph?wunit=wd%3Acom...](http://www.quantcast.com/profile/trafficGraph?wunit=wd%3Acom.posterous&wunit1=wd:com.tumblr&drg=&dty=pp&gl=all&reachType=period&dtr=dd&width=522&country=UK&ggt=large&showDeleteButtons=true&v=-974090870)

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webwright
Yikes-- I misread the graph. The post is adjusted. Sincere apologies to folks
for the incorrect analysis on my part.

The point stands though. This is a race without a finish line. With two
runners circling the track, it's more about who cramps up when. Tumblr was at
~7m uniques per month at the stage that Posterous is currently at (~2.5m
uniques). Certainly ahead, but not quite the blowout the RWW is reporting.

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mikeryan
actually if your point was "Tumblr Doesn't Leave Posterous in the Dust " the
misread does kind of kill your whole post.

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webwright
Having a competitor be 4 million uniques ahead of you when you're 2 years into
a consumer internet race? I dunno. Wordpress.com, by comparison, has about
160m uniques per month (per quantcast). Tumblr and Posterous are still in
"small potatoes" country-- it's anybody's game.

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mikeryan
4M vs 400K is a pretty wide margin. You also tried to compare growth rates
which didn't exist. Finally you're also are showing a graph with Tumblr's
growth climbing and postereous's growth pretty flat. If anything you just
reinforced the point that Tumblr _is_ leaving postereous in the dust.

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andre3k1
More on that first-mover advantage...

The author suggests that it is not a factor in this arena as Tumblr will
inevitably plateau due to a lack of new user signups. I disagree. So long as
there are new users signing up for these services they will most likely lean
toward Tumblr as the larger community is enough reason for them to go that
route. I believe it will be Posterous who plateaus as a result of this.

As it stands, Posterous should be content in _stealing_ Tumblr's users. And
boy have they capitalized on this. Posterous allows you to import your old
content from over 15 services (including Tumblr).

Facebook has shown us that there are over 500 million potential "new users."
I'm not sure it's safe to say that Tumblr new user signups will plateau as a
result of a lack of people showing interest in microblogging.

~~~
webwright
"So long as there are new users signing up for these services they will most
likely lean toward Tumblr as the larger community is enough reason for them to
go that route."

Geocities and LiveJournal are two sites that had pretty meteoric growth at
some point. Plenty of social networks (Orkut, MySpace) looked pretty shiny at
one point, too. Every company slows down-- otherwise upstart startups wouldn't
be able to beat incumbents.

~~~
andre3k1
Very true, but the examples you cited also involved long-time users abandoning
those services. The author was careful to note a plateau, not a downward
spiral.

Would I argue against Tumblr eventually hitting a downward spiral (negative
growth)? Certainly not. I think that is more likely to happen before it sees
no growth (positive or negative).

Additional edit: Mind you, I have no statistical evidence to support these
claims. These are purely some thoughts that I have, and, quite frankly, I
wouldn't mind being proven wrong.

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jlees
Label your graphs.

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awa
Ironically, the lack of substance in this article make it seems this it like a
"linkbait" rather than the original article the author calls linkbait

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edw519
Point: _Tumblr Leaves Posterous in the Dust_

Counterpoint: _It’s not just about growth rate. It’s about acceleration and
how much fuel you have in your tank._

Are you guys debating business or desert road racing?

Exactly when did we replace discussions of compelling business propositions,
market share, revenue, capitalization, and profitability with metaphors? Both
points of view could use a little more meat on their bones for the rest of us
to see past the cat fight and understand the real business issues at hand.

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daveschappell
great graph overlay/transpose -- i've found posterous to be much faster in my
infrequent use of both tumblr and posterous -- also, i'm not a fan of the
commenting mechanism (reblogging) from tumblr -- for folks who use it often,
they love it, but i find it to be really nonintuitive. makes me think that the
early adopter's love it, but to go mainstream they'll need to shift it, which
will turn off the early folks. posterous, by comparison, just does things
fast/elegant, which seems more broadly appealing. time will tell.

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webwright
Yeah, I find reblogging and some of the other mechanisms in Tumblr to be kinda
jumbled and confusing. On pure merit, I tend to lean towards Posterous... If I
were more of an early stage investor, I think I'd want stock in BOTH. :-)

