Tumblr wants your money
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
The three year old company Tumblr wants your money.
What is Tumblr? It's a service that allows people to quickly and easily set up lightweight blogs. They currently have 4.5 million users.
What makes them stand out is they do not charge their users for their service. They also do not sell advertising on pages they generate.
In the past Tumblr has received millions of dollars from Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures. Together they recently poured another $5 million making them the sole investors in Tumblr.
Now Tumblr wants to sell "digital stickers" to users at a dollar each. Users will buy these "stickers" to spruce up their pages, like bells and whistles.
Peter Kafka says this "strategy is a little more seat-of-the pants, but the bet is that it may be easier to coax money out of people a couple dollars at a time."
Although I had never heard of Tumblr before, I think that it is a great starting place for new journalist to get a start blogging, and get the feel of blogging. Because there is no cost associated with their service, new journalist don't have a huge financial investment, but allows them to start a portfolio of work.
2 comments:
I would like to know what kind of people use Tumblr. You're right this is a great way to get a start into the blogging part of journalism with that many users, but are the users of a specific interest group? If Tumblr is full of liberals how will a young conservative blogger/journalist gain a following?
I think that the whole idea of charging them a low amount is fairly smart. Personally, I would never waist money on something so simple. I would want people to read my blog for the information, not the "bells and whistles." It will be interesting to see the future of this company.
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