I have had something of a difficult time getting into the groove with Tumblr. I have nothing really against the product. Tumblr has a unique microblogging / social networking platform that clearly adds value value to its largely teen and college user segments. In 2011Tumblr boasted an 85% retention rate (compared to, for example, 40% at Twitter). It’s just that my current social media toolkit provides me with a range of options for all my needs. I have…
- Twitter – for my status updates or thought of the day
- Pinterest – for my photos / video “blogging”
- WordPress – for my longer, more thoughtful posts
- Facebook – for my day to day social interaction
- Quora – for the questions I have that my current network can’t answer
With all these tools, I’m not really sure where Tumblr will fit into my current computer-mediated-communication (CmC) tool-box. However, there is one thing about Tumblr that I thing is truly innovative and something to look out for: their advertising structure.
The founder of Tumblr, David Karp, has long been a critic of traditional banner or adsense advertising. It can be invasive / annoying for users and costly / ineffective for advertisers. Recently, Tumblr has been toying with some new advertising models that seem to be headed in the right direction.
For example there is the Highlighted Post option. Users or advertisers can pay $1-$5 and have their post get a special sticker to make it standout from the rest in the dashboard. To draw a parallel to one of my favorite sites 4-5 years ago (Digg), it’s like you are paying for “diggs” so that your post ranks higher and therefore gets more views. Sticker options include words such as “On sale now” or “Today only.” These paid blog posts stay at the top of Tumblr home pages of users who are already following those blogs. Users can also click “dismiss” to remove the adds. Furthermore, advertisers are only allowed to link to pages that appear on their own Tumblr blogs.The combined effect of these features is a less invasive experience for users and a more effective, targetted add for advertisers. It is therefore no surprise that advertisers are lining up to access the 60 million blogs on Tumblr.
Allen Miller 