We host our blog on Tumblr, and it’s our third-largest source of social media traffic after Twitter and Facebook. I asked my friends at Fitocracy for their stats (their blog is on Tumblr, too) and they reported that Tumblr was fourth after Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit, and it’s high-volume traffic as Fitocracy is doing several million pageviews monthly. For both of us, it’s in the top 10 of all sources of referral traffic.
With Tumblr, we’re talking about an enormous community — one of the largest on the Internet (rank 24 in the US according to Alexa). Using Tumblr, we not only get a publishing platform, with it comes a huge source of persistent, repeatable traffic and signups for free.
That’s why Paul Stamatiou’s recent post, Startups: Don’t Host Your Blog on Tumblr, came off as missing the boat on what’s really important in a company blog. It took a tech-centric approach (uptime, technical substitutes) to a question that’s really about user/customer acquisition and engagement. Simply put, not hosting something, whether it be a company blog or a tumblelog, on Tumblr amounts to nothing more than a missed opportunity to reach internet scale.
