Number of Tumblr Blogs in 2024: User Demographics, Growth, and Revenue - Financesonline.com (2024)

Tumblr is a pop-culture touchstone in the late aughts and holds a unique place among social networking sites as a meeting place for fandom, socio-political causes, weird quirks, and then some. The microblogging and social network has 518.7million blogs hosted on its site as of February 2021 (Tumblr, 2021). It is one of the many blogging platforms where over 32 million bloggers in the US alone reside (FirstSiteGuide, 2021).

Tumblr hasn’t had any new changes to its chronological dashboard concept with the exception of the much-hated “Best Stuff First” algorithm. Ownership and management changes in the last few years and the adult content ban have led to many bloggers switching platforms.

User account numbers are still climbing though not at the same pace as it was at its peak in 2013–2014. According to Tumblr, 12.8 million blog posts are published daily (Tumblr, 2021).

This article looks into Tumblr’s blog numbers, user demographics, and revenue growth projections by looking into the following topics:

Who is Tumblr’s target audience?

Tumblr users skew young—2 out of 5 users are between the ages of 18-25. The media shared on the platform appeal to Millenials and Gen Z. Millennials make up a third of the site’s audience.

How many posts are on Tumblr?

Tumblr generates 12.8 million posts in a day while it has accumulated 171.5 billion posts as of 2019, which is the latest available data (Tumblr, 2021; Tumblr, 2019). Blog posts on Tumblr can be in the form of text posts, GIFs, links, videos, and memes. Tumblr now has a 250 paragraph limit, paragraphs, in this case, mean a line of text with 15–20 words. Longtime Tumblr users were able to circumvent this rule by posting and editing on a browser instead of on the app.

Tumblr unique visitor stats

Tumblr has been seeing fluctuations in its global monthly visitors in light of the p*rn ban. Adult entertainers, artists, and content creators have delivered on their threat of leaving the platform. As a result of losing its NSFW content, unique visitor stats have dropped to 316 million from a high of 343 million over a period of six months in 2020 and 2021 (SimilarWeb, 2021). Unique visitor stats were noticeably higher—over 500 million—in the pre-p*rn ban era.

Tumblr website traffic decline

Tumblr’s total web traffic is on the decline—January 2021 is down by 20.5 million visits from January 2020—and not even the COVID-19 lockdown could drive visitors back to the once-popular blogging platform (SimilarWeb, 2021).

What has changed are the social media sites visitors frequent. Tumblr’s unique visitor stats have dropped considerably since it implemented the adult-content ban in December 2018. There has been a decrease of 5.9% in 2021 compared to the same period from the previous year.

How many Tumblr users are there currently?

Tumblr does not release its user stats beyond the number of blogs and total current posts. By default, the number of blogs—which, in the case of Tumblr, is 518.7 million— is the same as the number of user accounts, but account users can have multiple accounts so the specifics are unclear.

Meanwhile, a survey from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) of customer satisfaction with social media produced unexpected results.

Facebook has 2.8 billion monthly active users (Facebook, 2021), the largest among social media networks, places low in the ACSI, scoring just 64, behind Tumblr’s 66 (ACSI, 2020).

How many active users are on Tumblr?

As mentioned earlier, Tumblr does not release user data but insights from Verto Analytics place Tumblr monthly active users in the US at 16.74 million in September 2019 (Verto Analytics, 2019). The data is based on combined Tumblr access via desktop, mobile, and tablet.

Tumblr user numbers in the US were at an estimated 29.4 million in 2020; a growth rate of 8.32% year-on-year growth for a period of six years (The Motley Fool, 2016).

How many users did Tumblr lose?

The numbers vary among sources—anywhere from 27% to 33%—but they all agree that losing a third of its users isn’t good for Tumblr’s profits. Tumblr not only lost users and site visitors, but it has also seen a drop in the length of page visits and the number of page views.

Tumblr User Demographics

Tumblr, with its hashtags, GIFs, videos, and rebloggable memes, is appealing to the limited—discerning is more like it, being bombarded with information at every turn—attention span of Millenials.

What is the average age of Tumblr users?

Tumblr has users among all age groups. However, Tumblr is favored by younger users, the average age group is a mix of older Gen Z members and younger Millennials. Statistically, these are people in the 18-24 and 25-34 year-old segments.

Although the above statistic is for the US, the age demographic for worldwide use is not far off. Values only differ based on age segmentation. Tumblr policy requires the minimum age of 13 in the US and 16 years old for countries in the European Union. Other countries’ minimum age is 13 or within the range of the aforementioned.

Tumblr users by gender

Unlike other social networking sites, Tumblr’s users are equally split between the genders (AudienceProject, 2020). This exhibits the platform’s flexibility in regard to appeal and generated content.

Tumblr users by education, annual income, and urbanity

While having a US penetration rate of 42% (Tumblr, 2021), Tumblr’s data on user education is dated or unavailable. By extrapolating education based on the ages of frequent users, we came up with these education profiles for the majority of Tumblr users.

• Tumblr users are in high school or have graduated high school
• Tumblr users are in college or have a college degree

Tumblr users skew young but many of them work. In fact, 27% of Tumblr users have an annual household income of over $100,000. What’s noteworthy is the bigger share of users in other higher-income segments.

Similar to other social media users, more Tumblr users live in metropolitan areas. With better internet infrastructure and connectivity, the higher rate for urban-based users is a given. There is also the hypothesis that urban dwellers feel more disconnected and thus, feel the need to form attachments, even virtual ones.

Tumblr User Geographic Location

Tumblr is available in 18 languages and is used worldwide, but is blocked in China, Iran, Kazakhstan, and briefly, Indonesia. The restriction usually boils down to adult content and the open discussions of social issues.

What country uses Tumblr the most?

Most Tumblr users are from the US, providing close to half—47.43%— of the website’s traffic (SimilarWeb, 2021).

Tumblr visitor stats per region

Tumblr earns a place among the world’s social media sites. Facebook is still the unbeatable leader with nearly 70% worldwide share. Tumblr places 7th across most of the world’s regions while in Asia and Africa its use is hardly felt (Statcounter, 2021). Potential users from countries that have Tumblr blocked would have increased Tumblr’s user account numbers and might possibly be a factor for low usage numbers in Asia. There’s also the appearance of newer platforms that have tightened up the social media market.

Isolating Tumblr values for that chart above:

Tumblr Users Over Time

Though known and used by a variety of age segments, Tumblr is primarily a niche social network catering to the Gen Z and Millenial market. It’s founder, David Karp, a Millenial himself, was 21 years old when he started the company. Shifting ownership and changing perspectives toward adult-themed content on the microblogging site has caused upheavals not just within the company but also in the Tumblr community.

Tumblr users decline

Tumblr still gains new users although at a much slower pace compared to similar social network sites. User growth projections for 2020 are a quarter of what the growth rate was five years ago.

The site suffered its biggest decline after adult-themed content was banned in December 2018—from 521 million to under 370 million in two months. And its steady decline continues as it failed to capitalize on the inpour of internet users from the global COVID-19 lockdown.

The Tumblr exodus began earlier in 2013, albeit slowly, when Yahoo! purchased Tumblr and started filtering NSFW content. There were grumblings from the community about shadowbans (blocking a user’s content without making it evident to the user their account is banned) and safe mode as the default filter but web traffic to the site dropped 41% over a two-year period.

A drop in mobile app engagement further eroded Tumblr site traffic. It was a strong response to current Tumblr CEO, Jeff D’Onofrio’s seemingly flippant remark of “there are no shortage of sites on the internet that feature adult content (Tumblr, 2018)” prompting many users to decamp to NSFW-friendly sites.

Where did Tumblr users move to?

Twitter and Instagram were alternatives that Tumblr users switched to immediately after the Tumblr adult-content ban but both platforms also have shadowban issues and hashtag bans.

Other Tumblr alternatives that content creators moved to include Pillowfort, DeviantArt, Mastodon, Medium, and, Pinterest.

Tumblr User Behaviors

Tumblr is accessed through the web and the mobile app. Although the frequency and session length vary with each device, users typically use their desktops to access the platform, with statistics suggesting that they barely use their mobile devices (Statcounter, 2021).

Worldwide stats for Tumblr traffic place it at 0.36%, but if we adjust the data to reflect only desktop stats, it rises to 2.58% (Statcounter, 2021).

Its mobile app is the tenth most popular social media app in the US and has an average four-minute duration per session. Desktop use is longer at nine minutes, 43 seconds according to analytics from SimilarWeb.

Tumblr frequency of use and reasons for usage

The US has an 87% internet penetration rate, which makes access to information much more democratic. Mobile internet is easily accessible; a vast majority of Tumblr users log on to the site monthly at 88%. Only 31% of users use it daily(AudienceProject, 2020).

The need for entertainment is the primary reason why people log into Tumblr. Six out of 10 Tumblr users get their kicks from Tumblr while 21% gave the vague “other purposes” as their reason for using Tumblr.

Is Tumblr still relevant?

Tumblr is relevant to those who use it regardless of the content type they follow and enjoy. People flock to Tumblr for entertainment and as long as users have an audience or a following, Tumblr will be relevant. Indeed, going by some of the latest blog trends and predictions, this won’t be drastically changing any time soon. The better question is, how much revenue is Tumblr bringing in?

Tumblr revenue

Tumblr has not released any of its financials since 2013. The microblogging and social media site still make money with an estimated annual revenue of $65 million. The figure falls short of $100 million, the goal set by former CEO, David Karp after its acquisition by Yahoo!. The company has yet to meet this goal even as Karp was replaced by Jeff D’Onofrio in 2017.

Tumblr’s business model

Tumblr earns its revenue through advertisem*nts and other services. Tumblr’s business models can be broken down into 4 segments – sponsored posts, sponsored video posts, sponsored day, and premium theme sales.

The first three segments cater to businesses and brands and target specific markets or groups based on gender, interest, or location. Essentially, sponsored posts are ads that appear on a user’s feed or dashboard where it will be more likely to get clicks/engagements instead of on the sidebar which traditionally screams ads. Premium themes are targeted towards account users. These are available for free but paid options can be purchased with price ranges between $19 – $49 each.

Who owns Tumblr?

Tumblr has changed owners four times in a period of six years. From a company valuation of $1.1 billion during Yahoo!’s purchase in 2013 to less than $3 million when Verizon sold Tumblr to Automatic (WordPress’s parent company) in 2019 — a 99% decrease in value

What’s next for Tumblr? Automatic has not made its plans for the microblogging site known. For now, it plans to keep to the status quo and let the community be. How it will fare with the increased internet usage due to COVID-19 is anybody’s guess.

Tumblr’s revenue and business model are similar to the paradigms used by the best blog software today:

Most Popular Blog Software

1. Wix – Wix is a website builder, and as such, offers a versatile platform for bloggers and blogs.
2. Zoho Sites – Part of Zoho’s larger suite of SaaS, Zoho Sites is a free and simplified drag-and-drop website builder popular amongst bloggers.
3. Blogger – One of the mainstay blog-publishing services, Blogger offers blog-centric features for users.
4. Medium – One of the most popular independent publishing sites today, Medium offers a platform where users can publish their stories.
5. WordPress – The leading free and open-sourced content management and blogging system today, WordPress is a powerful platform with nearly endless customization possibilities.

References:

1. ACSI (2020, August). U.S. customer satisfaction with social media in 2020. Retrieved from Statista
2. AudienceProject (2020, September). Percentage of U.S. internet users who use Tumblr as of 3rd quarter 2020, by gender. Retrieved from Statista
3. Djuraskovic, O. (2021, March). Blogging Statistics 2021: Ultimate List with 47 Facts and Stats. Retrieved from FirstSiteGuide
4. Facebook (2021, January). Number of monthly active Facebook users worldwide as of 4th quarter 2020. Retrieved from Statista
5. SimilarWeb (2021). tumblr.com overview. Retrieved from SimilarWeb
6. Statcounter (2021, January). Desktop & Mobile Social Media Stats Worldwide. Retrieved from Statcounter
7. Statcounter (2021). Desktop Social Media Stats Worldwide. Retrieved from Statcounter
8. The Motley Fool (2016). Number of Tumblr users in the United States from 2014 to 2020. Retrieved from Statista
9. Tumblr (2021). About. Retrieved from Tumblr
10. Tumblr (2021). Press Information. Retrieved from Tumblr
11. Tumblr (2019). Cumulative total of Tumblr posts between May 2011 and April 2019. Retrieved from Statista