Tumblr Is Now More Popular Than WordPress

Posted in SOCIAL MEDIA | 1 comment

According to their respective websites, the microblogging platform Tumblr now hosts more blogs than WordPress.com.

Tumblr’s info page mentions that the site hosts more than 20.9 million total blogs, up from 7 million in January. By contrast, WordPress.com’s stats reveal that the platform powers 20.8 million Web sites. Tumblr was founded in 2007, while WordPress has been around since 2003.

WordPress.com’s count doesn’t include sites that people host themselves with the open source software via WordPress.org, but given that the hosted service had about a four-year headstart, surpassing it in number is still an impressive performance for Tumblr.

WordPress.com hosts a number of high-profile sites, such as the NFL, CNN, and TED. However, many big-name brands in entertainment, news, and fashion have recently flocked to Tumblr, which features a much heavier focus on social media compared to WordPress’ longer-form content. Considering the rapid-fire growth of the social media universe, and the ease with which Tumblr allows users to link to other social sites, Tumblr’s increasing popularity is not a huge surprise.

Tumblr is much simpler than WordPress, with more limited range for customization and complexity

Speaking at the Fashion Institute of Technology earlier this year, Tumblr founder David Karp mentioned this relaxed, congenial style of blogging, noting that Tumblr censors “hate words” from comments. “It’s hard to hurt someone with a heart button,” Karp said. Answering a Quora question on the matter, Dan Goodswin, who runs the popular Total Film blog, similarly notes “Tumblr culture is heavily meme-based, with fashion, photography and pop culture all heavily viral across the network.”

Tumblr’s meteoric rise proves there’s a desire for simple, elegant, short-form-content blogs that are heavy on imagery–a model that is being echoed elsewhere in the rise in photo sharing through iPhone apps like Instagram or Color. On the other hand, WordPress.com suffered a few security breaches earlier this year, which might have affected its popularity.