Microblogging has been a booming success for Twitter but a bust for many other start-ups that jumped on the bandwagon. An exception to this is Tumblr, who seemed to fill the gap between 140 characters and a full service blogging platform. Tumblr has experienced steady growth since its launch in 2007. The latest traffic stats from Compete report that Tumblr received nearly 2.5 million uniques and 7 million visits for the month of April.
|
|
David Karp, founder of Tumblr, touts the stylish tumblelogging platform as “sexy as hell” but the design is not the only sexy thing about Tumblr these days. In fact, many of Tumblr’s most popular blogs are producing content for mature audiences only. Traffic data from Quantcast shows that 16/20 (80%) of the top blogs at Tumblr are primarily focused toward publishing adult content. What’s more, a few of those are quite disturbing and may even border on unlawful depending on the jurisdiction. It is currently unknown whether or not if Tumblr’s staff is aware of such activities.
 |
Quantcast’s demographical data suggest that Tumblr may be attracting the wrong type of users for its blogging platform. According to Quantcast, visitors not only have any affinity for adult content on Tumblr but on other sexually suggestive sites as well. Tumblr’s audience is comprised primarily of young adult males that have an affinity for a variety of things such as humor, politics, science, men, fashion, and teens. Albeit Quantcast, like every traffic measurement solution, isn’t perfect there appears to be a clear trend for adult content publishing at Tumblr.
 |
 |
Ning, a roll-your-own social networking platform, recently purged itself of adult content publishers. This occurred after receiving heat from the press, possibly being in violation of Google AdSense’s terms of service (no adult content allowed), and in lieu of Gina Bianchini’s comments that adult social networks don’t pull their own weight in terms of generating revenue for Ning. In Tumblr’s case, however, the Google AdSense terms of service (TOS) may not be relevant as it doesn’t appear that Tumblr is serving ads via Google. The ads that are being served on these Tumblr blogs are more inline with the content that they display (i.e. adult, mature) and done so by their owners (not Tumblr). The crux of the matter may hinge on whether or not users are permitted to display advertising on their Tumblr blogs at all.
Interestingly, Tumblr’s own TOS states that, “Subscriber represents, warrants and agrees that it will not contribute any Subscriber Content that”… “(d) is libelous, defamatory, obscene, pornographic, abusive, indecent, threatening, harassing, hateful, offensive or otherwise violates any law or right of any third party”. Of course the question is: what’s Tumblr’s definition of pornographic, indecent, or offensive and are these blogs in violation of Tumblr’s TOS? For that answer, we’ll have to wait and hear what Tumblr’s people have to say about it, but for now I would like to hear your thoughts on the issue. Are these Tumblr-hosted blogs pornographic and in violation of Tumblr’s own TOS? Do you think they are offensive or indecent? If so, what do you think Tumblr should do about this, if anything?
Please Tweet, Bookmark, or Share This Free Content Using These Services:
Add New Comment
Subscribe to comments
Email
Reader
Listen or subscribe via podcast
I’m sure you realize that the percentage of traffic reported by Quantcast is probably completely wrong given they do not recognize domain mapped blogs as part of tumblr. Given that using your own domain is a free service on tumblr, my guess is there is a lot missing there.
That said, there are probably adult networks using their own domain, you aren’t giving a necessarily accurate view though.
Reply
Kevin Eklund reply on May 12th, 2009 10:10 pm:
As I noted in the article, no traffic measurement system is perfect. However, as you suggested above any Tumblr blog owner can implement their own domain for free which includes both adult and non-adult content publishers. Since there’s no evidence to support the notion that one type of content publisher (i.e. adult, non-adult) is more likely to use his/her own domain instead of the default subdomain, we can assume that perhaps that probabilities are similar. Thus, this would indicate once again that the majority of the most popular tumblelogs on Tumblr are publishing adult content.
I’m betting however, that a large number of adult content publishers on Tumblr are using their own domain and we are therefore unable to measure their traffic. This only makes sense given that it would be better for business branding/marketing purposes and it would allow them to keep their traffic data private. Moreover, Tumblr’s intended target user base is not as technically inclined to fuss with such things like domain mapping so I would be very surprised if the non-adult publishers had a higher propensity to redirect to their own domain. Hence, this suggests once again that the traffic data is representative of the sample and if skewed at all, it is most likely skewed towards a more modest estimation of the actual number of adult content publishers using Tumblr. This would mean we are actually underestimating the total number and percentage of adult content publishers on Tumblr.
Reply
I have been looking for this type of information. I shall be pleased to become a regular visitor
Reply
Twitter/Share/BookmarkThanks for saying that
I hope you stop in and lend us your insight more often, especially if it includes praise for our posts 
Reply
Twitter/Share/Bookmark