31 Facts About Tumblr

Tumblr is an American microblogging and social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007 and currently owned by Automattic.

Development of Tumblr began in 2006 during a two-week gap between contracts at David Karp's software consulting company, Davidville.

In June 2012, Tumblr featured its first major brand advertising campaign in conjunction with Adidas, who launched an official soccer Tumblr blog and bought placements on the user dashboard.

Tumblr blogs have the option to allow users to submit questions, either as themselves or anonymously, to the blog for a response.

Tumblr previously offered a "fan mail" function, allowing users to send messages to blogs that they followed.

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In November 2019, Tumblr introduced "group chats"—ephemeral chat rooms surfaced via searches, designed to allow users to share content in real-time with users who share their interests.

In May 2012, Tumblr launched Storyboard, a blog managed by an in-house editorial team which features stories and videos about noteworthy blogs and users on Tumblr.

In March 2018, Tumblr began to syndicate original video content from Verizon-owned video network go90, as part of an ongoing integration of Oath properties, and reported plans to wind down go90 in favor of using Oath properties to distribute its content instead.

Tumblr has been noted for the socially progressive views of its users.

Tags used as a form of communication are unique to Tumblr, and are typically more personal, expressing opinions, reactions, meta-commentary, background information, and more.

Multiple researchers looking into Tumblr have found that the website is often used as for community-building and a place to explore identity formation and gender expression for LGBT groups.

At the time of its acquisition by Yahoo, Tumblr was described by technology journalists as having a sizable amount of pornographic content.

In July 2013, Tumblr began to filter content in adult-tagged blogs from appearing in search results and tagged displays unless the user was logged in.

Tumblr stated that it was using various algorithms to detect potential violations, in combination with manual reviews.

In January 2022, Tumblr reached a settlement with New York City's Commission on Human Rights, which had claimed that the 2018 ban on adult content disproportionately affected LGBTQ+ users.

Tumblr's logo is set in Bookman Old Style with some modifications.

Tumblr has raised funding from Union Square Ventures, Spark Capital, Martin Varsavsky, John Borthwick, Fred Seibert, Krum Capital, and Sequoia Capital .

Tumblr made $13 million in revenue in 2012 and hoped to make $100 million in 2013.

Tumblr reportedly spent $25 million to fund operations in 2012.

In 2013, Tumblr began allowing companies to pay to promote their own posts to a larger audience.

Tumblr allows premium theme templates to be sold for use by blogs.

In February 2022, Tumblr launched an ad-free subscription option that removes the marketing from microblogs for $5 per month, or $40 per year.

Tumblr has received criticism for copyright violations by participating bloggers; however, Tumblr accepts Digital Millennium Copyright Act take-down notices.

Tumblr has been forced to manage spam and security problems.

In 2015, Tumblr faced criticism by users for changes to its reblog mechanisms.

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In September 2015, Tumblr changed how threads of comments on reblogged posts are displayed; rather than a nested view with indentations for each post, all reblogs are now shown in a flat view, and user avatars were added.

In February 2012, Tumblr banned blogs that promote or advocate suicide, self-harm and eating disorders .

In February 2018, BuzzFeed published a report claiming that Tumblr was utilized as a distribution channel for Russian agents to influence American voting habits during the 2016 presidential election.

In May 2020, Tumblr announced that it will remove reblogs of terminated hate speech posts, specifically Nazi and white supremacist content.

Tumblr stated that all images uploaded to the service are scanned against an industry database, but that a "routine audit" had revealed images that had not yet been added to the database.

Tumblr deployed an automatic content recognition system which resulted in many non-pornographic images being removed from the platform.