Tumblr, as one of the most popular microblogging platforms, has gained momentum recently. It is reported to have 166.4 million users and 73.4 billion posts as of January 2014. While many articles about Tumblr have been published in major press, there is not much scholarly work so far. In this paper, we provide some pioneering analysis on Tumblr from a variety of aspects. We study the social network structure among Tumblr users, analyze its user-generated content, and describe reblogging patterns to analyze its user behavior. We aim to provide a comprehensive statistical overview of Tumblr and compare it with other popular social services, including the blogosphere, Twitter, and Facebook, in answering a couple of key questions: What is Tumblr? How is Tumblr different from other social media networks? In short, we find Tumblr has more rich content than other microblogging platforms, and it contains hybrid characteristics of social networking, the traditional blogosphere, and social media. This work serves as an early snapshot of Tumblr that later work can leverage.
mobile