Tumblr Announces Advertising Package

by Mike Reiber

Last week, for the first time ever, Tumblr, the fast-growing but profitless blogging platform announced an advertising package. So what's the big deal? Why would advertisers eschew Facebook, YouTube and Twitter for a site that doesn't collect much user demographic information?  

The answer lies in Tumblr's growth and the fact that it's more visual than many of its peer sites. Tumblr's unique visits reached 58 million in March of this year up from 26 million a year ago according to comScore. Tumblr contains more than 54 million blogs. The site allows users to easily customize and share their blogs. According to the company, the average Tumblr user creates 14 blogs per month and reblogs three. Half of the posts are photos.  

The company has been dipping its toe in the water on a number of revenue generating initiatives such as allowing designers to sell web page themes to bloggers or allowing bloggers to promote their posts on its dashboard. The new ads will appear on the dashboard and directory pages used to highlight content categories and blogs.  

Our team at Axiom is excited about this development. The enthusiast customers targeted by our home and garden manufacturer clients are avid bloggers. They like to write about and share their experiences on cooking, wine, interior design, gardening, out door entertaining, etc. We believe that this will add yet another arrow to the quiver for innovative marketers who want to break out of the Facebook and YouTube pack.  

Tumblr Gets an Oatmeal-Inspired Fail Whale Page of its Own

The much-trafficked blogging service Tumblr has taken a lot of heat over the past year for its extensive downtime issues. And while Tumblr is not alone in its downtime issues, they don't have any amusing downtime page like Twitter's Fail Whale or Foursquare's crying girl.

But that is no longer the case, because they have a downtime page featuring "Tumbeasts" gnawing away at  their server equipment. The catch? The page was designed by The Oatmeal's Matthew Inman. 

For those who don't know, The Oatmeal is an insanely popular online cartoon that garnered over a quarter of a billion page views last year. That's what makes this a smart move on Tumblr's part, because they are taking advantage of The Oatmeal's popularity to make fun of themselves during downtime. In doing so, they are relieving a small portion of the backlash from their outages.

Of course, simply fixing the outages themselves would be the best solution.

Tumbling Down the Rabbit Hole

Remember the surreal feelings of despair and confusion whenever Facebook or Twitter were down?

Well, many users of the popular blogging service Tumblr went through that same social media melancholy after the site suffered a crippling blow and was down for over 24 hours (practically an eternity in Internet time).

Okay, I admit that may be a bit overdramatic. But the fact is that Tumblr was down for an inordinate amount of time and a lot of people took notice.

It seems that Tumblr may have been a victim of its own success, with the company stating it was heavy traffic that caused the meltdown. In some ways it's a good problem to have because it means you're growing, but there needs to be a solid infrastructure to support that growth.

Unfortunately for Tumblr, the wake-up call for those infrastructure repairs and growth support down the road have come at the cost of a lot of angry tweets and Facebook posts and a fairly substantial image backlash.

Were you affected by Tumblr's downtime? And do instances like this change the way you view different sites and networks?