Tumblr
This spread through many posts rather than one canonical upload.
2007·Early YouTube
A blogging site built around short posts and reposting other people’s, with attribution.
At a glanceThe facts
- Spread in
- 2007
- Made by
- David Karp, with Marco Arment on the first version
- Record
- More than 465 million blogs and 172 billion posts by May 2019
- Origin
- No single original
- Available
- Not held by ViralWorld
What this wasThe story
A blogging service whose defining mechanic was the reblog: sharing meant appending, so a post accumulated a visible chain of additions by strangers. That single decision produced a culture no other platform reproduced, and its 2018 adult-content ban emptied a great deal of it overnight.
Why it matteredWhat changed
Bought for 1.1 billion dollars in 2013 and sold for a reported three million six years later.
TimelineIn order
- Made
The site is launched.1
- Later
Yahoo announces that it is buying Tumblr for 1.1 billion dollars.1
- Record
Posts peak at more than a hundred million a quarter. By October 2018 the figure is about thirty million.1
- Later
A ban on explicit images takes effect.1
- Later
Its sale to Automattic is announced, reportedly for less than three million dollars.1
What it createdWhat came out of it
- It inspired DashConEvent · 2014
A convention organised for Tumblr users, first titled Tumbl-Con USA.
Why it is here: something the internet still knows by name · it got out of its own corner of the internet fast
Where it came fromWhat we know
This spread through many posts rather than one identifiable original. No copy is held here — what it was, when it spread and what people called it is what this page can tell you.
Nothing here is claimed to be the first version of this. It spread through many posts rather than from one identifiable original.
Not established. This index only names a creator where the evidence supports it.
More from 2007You were there
ConnectedFollow it further
- It helped spread SuperWhoLockPhenomenon · 2012
The crossover began on Tumblr in the early 2010s and dominated it until the middle of the decade.
- From this event The Tumblr adult content banEvent · 2018
The ban was announced by Tumblr on 3 December 2018 and applied to its own site.
SourcesWhat was read
Sources last read on . That date is about the history on this page. Whether the media still plays is checked separately and can change any day. How ViralWorld documents things