Way to go, Tumblr! You know we’re a fan!

As soon as you begin to pat yourself on the back for mastering the wild and crazy world of Twitter and Facebook, something new crops up on the Internet horizon. And before you know it, your social media marketing channels are in danger of becoming obsolete. Remember MySpace? In this fast-paced environment influenced by 140 character tweets, unless a social media platform uses the word “micro,” it’s no longer cool. The fast-growing micro-blogging platform Tumblr is the latest example of the “micro” craze. Tumblr has now surpassed WordPress, the archetype open source blogging platform that hosts some of the largest blogs on the Web. As of this writing, Tumblr is hosting 20,873,182 blogs compared to WordPress’ paltry 20,787,904. This is an amazing turn of events, considering the fact that WordPress has been in existence four-years longer than the upstart Tumblr.

Everyone is Tumblelogging Now

Don’t look now, but Tumblr is poised to emerge as the next great Internet sensation, right behind Twitter. Tumblr has only been around since 2007, but now hosts over 20 million micro blogs, and boasts 9.2 million daily page views. There’s more. Tumblr’s popularity has been accelerating at breakneck speed, and all signs point to continued growth. Why has Tumblr become so popular, so fast? It may have something to do with our short attention spans and our embracing of short texts and tweets as our primary means of social communication. In addition, Tumblr offers a fun and easy platform to establish an online presence that’s an appealing blog, Twitter-like, social networking hybrid. It’s blogging, but without the commitment. Tumblr is a diverse social community that relies on short bursts of text, photos and video to communicate with the world. It’s much more visual than your average blog. And it’s catching on big time.

Tumblr By the Numbers

●        Daily Pageviews:

●        May 2009: 1 million

●        May 2010: 3.6 million

●        June 2011: 9.2 million

●        Monthly Pageviews:

●        May 2009: 100 million

●        June 2010: 1.6 billion

●        June 2011: 7.6 billion

●        Monthly Visitors:

●        May 2009: 4 million

●        June 2010: 37 million

●        June 2011: 85 million

●        Total Blog Posts:

●        August 2010: 1 billion

●        June 2011: 6.5 billion

Is Tumblr the Right Platform for Your Business?

The freewheeling Tumblr community is young, hip and fashion forward. The largely visual and video-based medium is akin to a blank canvass, in which artistic types can express themselves in the twenty-first century. Tumblr makes it easy with its intuitive interface, and a simple dashboard that keeps track of the tumblelogs you are following, which offers the means to quickly respond to a post. Users can opt to simple reblog a post with one click of their mouse, which instantly places it on their own tumblelog. The reblog feature operates much like embedding a video. A popular reblog can also quickly go viral and create an Internet meme just like a YouTube video.

So far, a slew of new media, entertainment and fashion enterprises have rushed to establish a presence on Tumblr, including MTV, Kate Spade New York, Juicy Coture and Urban Outfiters. The intensely visual Tumblr provides the perfect platform for the fashion world.

However, social media professionals from all types of business ventures can adjust their marketing strategies to concentrate on the visual aspects of their particular enterprise. Last year, I reported on the resurgence of Tumblr after the micro-blogging service became overshadowed by the popularity of Twitter. I considered Tumblr to be a valuable business tool then, and even more so now.

Video and colorful photos, in other words, eye candy, are what’s needed to create an effective Tumblr. With over 20 million micro-blogs and counting, you can no longer afford to ignore the flashy micro-blogging platform.

chrisrecord:

So it looks like Google might be redesigning their search engine again.  This time getting new colors invovled but also adding websites links underneath the title.  Google’s success has been based on their simplistic look and feel, so every time they make changes it is big news, because many people expect them to go the direction of Yahoo very soon, with a ton of options available on the home page.  What do YOU think?

webfeuer:

Despite the raw number of courses on the market, Twitter is pretty straight forward.  It’s like public text messaging, which can be really cool, or really annoying depending on your mood.

Recently, a new way to use Twitter popped up, and is growing like gang busters.  If you’re savvy enough, you can capitalize on this new craze called “Twitter Chats”…

~> full article on blog.fandura.com

chrisrecord:

In this video I interview Christi McNeil, emerging media specialist and spokesperson for Southwest Airlines. She handles the online media relations and is the voice behind the Southwest Airlines Twitter account.

Christi talks about how to use social media to connect with customers by sharing behind-the-scenes stories, covering breaking news and seizing opportunities to connect with customers on a deeper level.

Be sure to check out the takeaways below after you watch the video.

smartercities:

Digital China’s smart city strategy gaining an edge_Insight—China Economic Net

It is estimated that 70 percent of China’s population will be urbanized by the year 2017. It takes China 20 to 30 years to finish the urbanization process that has taken western industrialized countries 100 to 200 years. “Behind the rapid urbanization there lie many contractions and conflicts. Information technology is undisputedly the most effective means to resolve the contractions during the rapid development of cities.” said Qian Weilie.

(via techspotlight)

prepfire:

What makes a successful Gov2.0 leader?

According to GovLoop, a social network for people in and around government qualities like being innovative, trustworthy, inclined to share information, team-oriented, intuitive and task oriented definitely helps. The new trend in web-based citizen engagement requires peripheral vision; knowing what to talk about inside the bureaucracy and learning what people on the outside want to know. Having an influence makes a difference too-make sure you are effective in convincing agency and organizational leaders of the importance and value of new initiatives.

Combine those skill sets and you’re likely to find a Gov2.0 leader that is no doubt worth following!

(via sharonhayessocialmedia)

selltobusiness:

The phrase “get more twitter followers” gets over thirty-three thousand searches on Google alone. You may have created your social media accounts just to wonder why no one is following you. There are videos on YouTube telling you that the best way to gain social media friends or followers is…