Timeline of Tumblr

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This is a timeline of Tumblr. "Often described as Twitter meets YouTube and WordPress, Tumblr lets its users curate pictures, videos and text in one place online."[1]

Big picture

Time period Development summary More details
"Tumblr was founded by David Karp in 2007 as a method for people to post “tumblelogs” — essentially short-form blogs — featuring links, short paragraphs and a stream of consciousness style. It rapidly grew a wild and fractious user base, split into dozens if not hundreds of communities united by niche interests."[1]
2009 Rise to popularity Tumblr releases its first app “tumblrette” with which app users have the freedom to post to their blog whenever they want. This is considered the start of tumblr becoming very popular.[2]
2013–2017 Acquisition Tumblr is acquired by Yahoo. Since then, the site would decline along with the rest of that corporate entity.[1]
2017–2019

Full timeline

Year Month and date Event type Details
1986 Leadership American web developer David Karp is born in New York City.[3]
2005 March "In March 2005, a 17-year-old German high school student named Chris Neukirchen invented this tumblelog system, specifically for super-short blogging. He even used the term "tumblin'" on his site Anarchaia: The only rule for tumblelogs was that they be a single paragraph — a rule that persists on many Tumblr formats today." "Anarchaia was then followed by "Projectionist," a blog project from two Americans, Marcel Molina and Sam Stephenson"[4]
2006 June "In June of 2006, the development of tumblr began. tumblr was founded by young David Karp. tumblr became public less than a year later."[2]
2007 "In 2007, Molina received a message from Karp that he was publishing his first "Tumblr" tumbleblog, inspired by Projectionist:" "It's important to point out that Karp didn't "steal" Tumblr. His format was new and advanced the short-form blogging format in several ways."[4]
2007 February 19 Service launch In his mother's small apartment located in Manhattan, David Karp launches Tumblr as a free, simplified microblogging service that facilitates the creation of tumblelogs (a sort of short-form blogs), useful for featuring links, short paragraphs and a stream of consciousness style. It becomes useful for users who want to setup quick and easy link blogs or photo blogs.[2] The service is co-founded with Marco Arment.[5][1]
2007 November 1 Service launch Tumblr website is fully launched.[3]
2008 Late "Karp did sell 25% of his one-year-old company as part of a $4.5m funding round from Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital in late 2008."[6]
2009 February Tumblr releases its first app “tumblrette” with which app users have the freedom to post to their blog whenever they want. This was the start of tumblr becoming very popular.[2]
2009 July Growth Tumblr receives over 50 million views a month. The site reports 6 posts every second and 2 reblogs for every second and a half. Every day tumblr receives 5,000 new users and they have 9 book deals.[2]
2009 ". In 2009, Molina was hired as Twitter's 20th engineer and continues to work there. "[4]
2009 Leadership Tumblr’s CEO David Karp is named the Best Young Tech Entrepreneur by Businessweek.[7]
2011 January Tumblr reaches more than 7 million individual blogs.[8]
2011 Mid-year Financial Tumblr secures venture capital worth over $40 million.[3]
2011–2012 May 2011–2012 Competition Pinterest grows 4,377 percent in the period, while Tumblr grows a much lower 168 percent.[9]
2011–2012 July 2011–July 2012 Userbase Tumblr's monthly unique visitor count increases by 100% to 26.9 million in the period.[8]
2011 June Competition Tumblr counts 20,873,182 blogs, surpassing WordPress.com by about 85,000.[8]
2012 January 29 As of date, Tumblr hosts more than 42 million blogs, ranging from politics to music and pictures.[6] In the same month, Tumblr announces a milestone 15 billion page views every month, from the site's 120 million unique viewers.[9]
2012 February Tumblr launches in North America ‘highlighted posts’, a feature that lets users pay to get more visibility for their work.[10]
2012 March Userbase Tumblr attracts 21.8 million unique visitors in the month – a million more than February – and over 2.5 times its visitors a year earlier.[10]
2012 March Tumblr reports 20 billion posts for over 50 million hosted blogs on its platform.[11]
2012 May Tumblr announces that it would start selling ads on Radar and Spotlight, two features that highlight interesting and new content on Tumblr blogs. Price for an ad starts at US$25,000.[12][13]
2012 June Tumblr released its new and improved iOS app, where users can blog from anywhere at anytime on their mobile devices faster and more efficiently.[14]
2012 June Tumblr reports that pornography only accounts for 2-4% of all content on the site.[11]
2012 June "tumblr had its first big ad deal with adidas. Now with big companies wanting to be featured tumblr was able to bring in more money. This proved the extent of the popularity of tumblr"[2]
2012 September Growth Tumblr reaches 73 million blogs.[12]
2012 Year round Financial Tumblr makes about US$13 million in revenue in the year.[15]
2013 February Tumblr releases real-time notifications on user dashboards, a feature designed to increase user engagement, very similar to Facebook’s News Ticker.[16][17][18]
2013 March Growth Tumblr passes the 100 million blogs milestone,[19] with 117 million unique users worldwide, up from about 58 million a year earlier.[20][21]
2013 April Tumblr launches mobile in-stream ads, its biggest advertising initiative to date. For the first time advertisers may access to Tumblr stream, where users see friends’ posts and their own. The advertisements look like regular posts and users would see no more than four ads a day.[22]
2013 May "In may of 2013, tumblr was purchased by the Yahoo! ceo Marissa Mayer. At this time tumblr was receiving 100 million users a day with 90 million posts to follow. Mayer scored tumblr for $1.1 billion cash and her first words were “we promise not to screw it up.”"[2] ". The site was acquired by Yahoo in 2013 and declined along with the rest of that corporate entity, and is now owned by Verizon’s Oath division. But in its prime, Tumblr was a hotbed for Weird Internet, generating unforgettable memes, crazy stories, and legendary posts. Here are some of the most notorious. Thanks to tumblr memedocumentation and Twitter user 3liza for research help."[1][2]
2013 May Tumblr is purchased by the Yahoo! for US$1.1 billion in cash. At this time tumblr receives 100 million users a day with 90 million posts to follow. [2][23]
2014 February Tumblr introduces Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption, a cryptographic protocol designed to provide secure communication on the web, making it harder for hackers to get users' data.[24]
2014 "One more historic event: In 2014 the President of the United States and David Karp talked about how to pronounce the word GIF"[5]
2014 "There comes a point in the life cycle of every online community when it reaches a critical mass and users make the leap into congregating online. This is always a mistake. Case in point: DashCon, created in 2014 to allow Tumblr users to meet some of their favorite content creators and enjoy special programming and performances. That… did not happen."[1]
2015 January Tumblr launches Creatrs Network, an advertising platform aimed at helping connect Tumblr bloggers with brands and other organizations that want to use Tumblr artist content in their ads and marketing.[25][26][27]
2015 November Growth Tumblr reaches over 261 million blogs and over 123 billion posts.[2]
2015 November Tumblr introduces a new function known as instant messaging, which lets bloggers connect with followers privately and contact friends. This function would lead to many collaborations between bloggers.[2][28][29][30]
2015 December "Tumblr was a home for all kinds of subcultures, including religious ones. It also was a home for “call-out posts,” where one user would put another on blast for a crime real or imaginary. One of the most epic call-outs of all time came in December of 2015 when user pastel-prouvaire issued a warning about a woman named Ender Darling for… wait for it… stealing human bones from a flooded cemetery in Louisiana. This was allegedly for use in witchcraft ceremonies, but the moral repercussions of just grabbing another human’s remains were very explicitly explained to them."[1]
2016 June 21 Tumblr launches support for live video from YouTube, YouNow, Kanvas and Upclose. The feature allows users to live stream video directly to their followers’ Dashboards, and dends push notifications when users go live or reblog a live stream.[31][32][33][34]
2016 October Tumblr launches "Labs", a tool that allows users test experimental features before they're made available as standard. Four new features available for people to test are launched with the program, including graphs showing users' posts' reblogs, more advanced scheduling options for queues posts, better tools for group Tumblrs, and an option that lets users change the color of their posts to the color of their Tumblr.[35][36][37][38]
2017 April 18 Tumblr launches video chat app "Cabana", which lets up to six users video chat together at the same time and stream YouTube videos to watch while chatting.[39][40][41]
2017 June Acquisition Verizon acquires Tumblr after purchasing Yahoo.[42]
2018 January In a survey by the Korea Communications Standards Commission, Tumblr is branded one of the most visited websites containing obscene material among South Korean adolescents, with 465 out of the 10,000 respondents spending 14 minutes per session on the website on average.[43]
2019 August Verizon agrees to sell Tumblr to WordPress owner Automattic for an undisclosed amount.[42]
2019 November Tumblr launches group messaging threads designed to connect people of different fandoms, a feature expected to provide a more direct bridge for users looking to discuss interests outside of the re-blogging a post. Unlike other similar community features on platforms like Facebook, which has various 'Groups' where users gravitate around interests, this group is programmed to last only 24 hours after being created.[44]

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See also

External links

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 "8 Insane Moments on Tumblr That Will Go Down in History". geek.com. Retrieved 13 September 2019. 
  2. 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 "a Breif History of tumblr". timetoast.com. Retrieved 12 September 2019. 
  3. 3.0 3.1 3.2 "A History of Tumblr – See How David Karp Founded The Company". businessideaslab.com. Retrieved 12 September 2019. 
  4. 4.0 4.1 4.2 "These Screengrabs Show David Karp Did NOT Invent The 'Tumblelog' That Gave Birth To Tumblr". businessinsider.com. Retrieved 12 September 2019. 
  5. 5.0 5.1 "Today in Media History: David Karp and Marco Arment launched Tumblr in 2007". poynter.org. Retrieved 12 September 2019. 
  6. 6.0 6.1 Halliday, Josh. "David Karp, founder of Tumblr, on realising his dream". theguardian.com. Retrieved 13 September 2019. 
  7. "Tumblr: Finding Appeal in the Anti-Blog". business2community.com. Retrieved 22 November 2019. 
  8. 8.0 8.1 8.2 "Tumblr Now Has More Blogs Than WordPress.com". mashable.com. Retrieved 22 November 2019.  Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; name "mashable.com" defined multiple times with different content
  9. 9.0 9.1 "Pinterest Tops Tumblr in National Popularity?". uk.pcmag.com. Retrieved 22 November 2019. 
  10. 10.0 10.1 "Tumblr to start selling ads". marketingweek.com. Retrieved 22 November 2019. 
  11. 11.0 11.1 OLANOFF, DREW. "Surprisingly, porn only accounts for 2-4% of all content on Tumblr". thenextweb.com. Retrieved 22 November 2019. 
  12. 12.0 12.1 Latchana Kenney, Karen. David Karp: The Mastermind behind Tumblr. 
  13. Perez, Sarah. "Cinemagraphs (Animated Gifs) As Ads? Tumblr Experiments With New Advertising Format". techcrunch.com. Retrieved 24 November 2019. 
  14. WEBER, HARRISON. "Tumblr will be launching a brand new iOS app next week, says David Karp". thenextweb.com. Retrieved 23 November 2019. 
  15. "Source: Tumblr Made Even Less Money Than Reported Last Year". valleywag.gawker.com/. Retrieved 22 November 2019. 
  16. "Tumblr Adds Real-Time Notifications To Its Dashboard". techcrunch.com. Retrieved 22 November 2019. 
  17. "TUMBLR ADDS REAL-TIME NOTIFICATIONS TO SITE". firstpost.com. Retrieved 22 November 2019. 
  18. "Tumblr borrows another Facebook feature, adds real-time notifications to dashboard". theverge.com. Retrieved 22 November 2019. 
  19. MacMillan, Gordon. "Yahoo agrees to pay in excess of $1bn for Tumblr". campaignlive.com. Retrieved 22 November 2019. 
  20. Young, Noel. "Marissa brings Tumblr into the Yahoo family for $1.1 billion". thedrum.com. Retrieved 22 November 2019. 
  21. "It's Been Confirmed: Yahoo Is Buying Tumblr". m2bespoke.co.uk. Retrieved 22 November 2019. 
  22. "Inside Tumblr's Massive Monetization Opportunity". businessinsider.com.au. Retrieved 24 November 2019. 
  23. "Verizon agrees to sell Tumblr to owner of Wordpress". axios.com. Retrieved 23 November 2019. 
  24. "Browse Tumblr Securely". tricks-for.tumblr.com. Retrieved 22 November 2019. 
  25. "Tumblr Launches Creative Agency to Connect Artists With Advertisers". wired.com. Retrieved 22 November 2019. 
  26. "Tumblr Launches An In-House Ad Agency That Pairs Creators With Big Brands". fastcompany.com. Retrieved 22 November 2019. 
  27. "Tumblr Launches New Ad Initiative to Connect Popular Bloggers With Major Brands". entrepreneur.com. Retrieved 22 November 2019. 
  28. "Tumblr launches instant messaging on Android, iOS, and the web". theverge.com. Retrieved 22 November 2019. 
  29. Perez, Sarah. "Tumblr Rolls Out Instant Messaging On Both Web And Mobile". techcrunch.com. Retrieved 22 November 2019. 
  30. "Tumblr adds instant messaging: Here's how the threaded conversations work". pocket-lint.com. Retrieved 22 November 2019. 
  31. Liffreing, Ilyse. "Tumblr launches support for live video -- from other platforms". campaignlive.com. Retrieved 22 November 2019. 
  32. Perez, Sarah. "Tumblr launches live video support in partnership with YouTube, YouNow and others". techcrunch.com. Retrieved 22 November 2019. 
  33. Kastrenakes, Jacob. "Tumblr integrates live-streaming from YouTube, YouNow, and other video apps". theverge.com. Retrieved 22 November 2019. 
  34. Burns, Chris. "Tumblr launches Live Video, but wont host". slashgear.com. Retrieved 22 November 2019. 
  35. Perez, Sarah. "Tumblr launches Labs so users can test experimental features". techcrunch.com. Retrieved 22 November 2019. 
  36. McCormick, Rich. "Tumblr's new Labs program lets users test experimental features". theverge.com. Retrieved 22 November 2019. 
  37. "Willing Participants Needed!". staff.tumblr.com. Retrieved 22 November 2019. 
  38. "Tumblr launches "Labs" letting users test new features". fastcompany.com. Retrieved 22 November 2019. 
  39. Kastrenakes, Jacob. "Tumblr launches a video chat app for watching YouTube with friends". theverge.com. Retrieved 22 November 2019. 
  40. Perez, Sarah. "Tumblr launches Cabana, a new app for watching videos with friends". techcrunch.com. Retrieved 22 November 2019. 
  41. "Tumblr is launching a video chat app called Cabana". vox.com. Retrieved 22 November 2019. 
  42. 42.0 42.1 "Verizon is selling Tumblr to WordPress' owner". theverge.com. Retrieved 23 November 2019. 
  43. "Tumblr Under Pressure Amid Growing Adult Content". koreabizwire.com/. Retrieved 22 November 2019. 
  44. "Tumblr is launching group messaging threads that will connect people of different fandoms and disappear after 24 hours". dailymail.co.uk. Retrieved 22 November 2019.