Tumblr Growth Slows As Rival Platforms Expand

Tumblr, the social-blog mashup that Yahoo purchased in 2013, is struggling to grow its reach among internet users and it isn’t expected to get any better through 2020, according to a new report from eMarketer.

Per the report, the short-form blog site with social media elements is only in use by 8.7 percent of the Internet population. The average usage for social networks as a whole is almost 70 percent. While Tumblr does have heavy use among Millennial audiences, it trails other platforms popular with that same age group by a considerable margin. In 2016, Tumblr is projected to have 23.2 million US-based users. Comparing that to Pinterest’s 54.6 and Instagram’s 89.4 million, Tumblr is lagging behind in a big way. Over the next four years, it will fall further behind those networks.

The platform, known for its irreverent attitude and unique character, was purchased for over a billion dollars during the early days of Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s reign and it has struggled to retain value for its parent company. At the time, founder David Karp had been building the site since 2006. Through the years, the site has been controversial for a variety of reasons, from excessive pornography to blogs that promoted criminal and harmful activities to copyright violations. That last point was sometimes related to Tumblr’s unique ‘reblogging’ option where a user can reuse content from another blog on their own site.

Despite these challenges and assimilation into the Yahoo empire, Tumblr will grow in double-digit numbers this year but the headwinds it faces may be related to its own slower platform development. As mobile consumption of social content has risen, Tumblr is taking steps to improve engagement in ways that many other social rivals already have (i.e., messaging, video and more short-form content types). Furthermore, the rise of newer social apps like Snapchat, Instagram and Vine are more popular with Gen-Z audiences that aren’t interested in Tumblr’s format.

While the community on Tumblr is highly-educated and relatively young, normally an attractive audience for marketers, many brands have been cautious about working on the platform. If the character of the brand isn’t a good match for the Tumblr audience, product messages can be received with hostility. This lack of buy-in from brands is part of the challenge with Yahoo seeing the revenue they’d hoped to gain from buying the platform. That’s an opportunity for brands that are a good fit. There have been successful activations with the right product and message that might not aim at just a large audience but a highly targeted and engaged one they can find on Tumblr.