Tumblr just raised $20-million, which shouldn’t come as a major surprise given the large amounts of venture capital being thrown around these days. It’s solidifies the belief a service with millions of users doesn’t necessarily need to have a business model that throws off lots of revenue and profits.
Putting aside Tumblr’s business model, which is apparently being driven by hosting blogs for large media companies, it could easily be belle of the social media ball in 2011. As someone who has caught the Tumblr bug, I think it will start to resonate with not only the digerati but “regular” people as well because Tumblr sits in the sweet spot between Twitter and blogs (aka Blogger, WordPress).
This is an interesting place to be because there are a lot of people now using Twitter who may be looking to use a platform that offers more real estate than 140 characters. Part of Twitter’s appeal is that 140 characters is easy and quick but there’s a limit to how much information or content that can be delivered. On the other hand, blogs can be a lot of work because you need an idea, it has to be well written and it takes time.
This is where Tumblr comes into play: It offers more real estate than Twitter but it isn’t positioned as something that is used for long posts. Tumblr encourages people to use it for a variety of reasons – blog posts, photos, video, audio or quotes. This makes Tumblr appealing to the social media and blog geeks, as well as offering everyone else something that it user-friendly and useful.
For these reasons, Tumblr could emerge as the social media star of 2011 – making it an overnight success after being around for a couple of years. Tumblr’s mainstream appeal is something Foursquare was never able to capture despite it being hailed by the geeks at SXSW as the next Twitter. Foursquare has lots of users but it’s really a niche service.
Do not be surprised if a growing number of people start climbing on the Tumblr bandwagon, including the social media “influencers” who will start to put the spotlight on how they have embraced Tumblr much like they were did after Twitter started to emerge as the next big thing.
For more on Tumblr, check out ReadWriteWeb, which compared Tumblr with WordPress.
