And the platform continues to expand rapidly: It has added more than 13 million blogs to its servers in just over five months
Tumblr now hosts even more blogs than WordPress.com, according to the statistics that both sites make public. While the WordPress number doesn't include the millions of blogs that are hosted elsewhere on the Web and built using the WordPress.org software, Tumblr's ability to surpass it shows incredible growth.
The site, which offers free blog hosting to both individuals and organizations, is just four years old. WordPress.com, on the other hand, has been around for eight years. What's more, Tumblr only hosted about seven million blogs this past January, adding more than 13 million to its servers in just five months.
"Clearly a flood of individuals have been signing up for Tumblr lately," Mashable's Sarah Kessler wrote. "But top companies in entertainment and news and fashion have also recently launched Tumblr blogs. They're using the platform in a very different way than they use WordPress.com" That is, if they use WordPress at all. While the Atlantic's website is run using a combination of content management systems, it doesn't utilize WordPress. It does, though, maintain a Tumblr.
One interesting thing to note here: While Tumblr has proven to be very popular with users of all stripes, it has refused to embrace importing tools. That is, WordPress.com users who might want to switch over to Tumblr would find it difficult to move their content from one platform to another. This could be hurting the site's growth. Adding these basic functions would not only allow Tumblr to continue expanding in a new way, but also improve the ratio of blogs hosted on Tumblr versus the number hosted on WordPress.com
Images: 1. Tumblr; 2. WordPress.com.
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