Unlike Facebook and Twitter, Tumblr is largely an experiment for media organizations. In fact, many big brands still don’t have a presence on the social blogging platform. But there’s increasing evidence that it may be time to take Tumblr seriously.
Nielsen’s Social Media Report, just released this week, backs up Tumblr’s powerful growth story. Over the last year, Tumblr’s unique users have grown 183% to 11.8 million. It’s third behind Facebook and Blogger in time-spent — even more than Twitter and Linkedin — and the eighth largest site overall in the social networks and blogs category.
Tumblr’s core audience is women 18 to 34 years old, a cherished demographic among many TV advertisers. Women 35-49 years-old follow close behind. It’s especially compelling when you consider that 70% of active social networkers shop online, 12% more than the average internet user, according to Nielsen data.
Perhaps the Tumblr enigma among media companies is it’s not quite like other social platforms. Is it a niche blog? Is it a visual, longer-form Twitter? It’s sort of both, with Tumblr’s “reblog” feature roughly equal to a Twitter retweet. Here are a couple of our favorite Tumblrs in the TV space:
One of the newest TV Tumblrs is run by Anderson Cooper’s new daytime TV show, which premieres today. Producers have been running the Backstage Tumblr for a couple months now, showing behind-the-scenes photos, YouTube clips, tweets and the occasional staff profile. Like the best Tumblrs, it’s visually catchy. “(It) looks beautiful, and provides a great peek backstage into how the show gets made,” explains Tumblr’s Mark Coatney.
And there’s TODAY, which has become a Tumblr phenom among the TV space because of its pithy, hilarious posts that resonate with younger women.
As far as we can tell, there’s no index of TV Tumblrs (hmm, maybe we should get on that,) although there’s a great list of news media Tumblrs to explore, including a few local TV stations like KING 5 in Seattle. As you can see, many big brands are absent. But given Tumblr’s current rate of growth, you can bet we’ll see more media companies jump on Tumblr in the months to come.