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Tumblr Leaves Posterous in the Dust

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Re: Tumblr Leaves Posterous in the Dust

#21

Post by webwright »

There's a timeshifting problem at work here. If Tumblr was indeed first to market, then it SHOULD be ahead. They are similar products with similar (viral) growth styles. A more interesting questions would be this: Is Posterous growing as fast as Tumblr when Tumblr was at this stage/age.

Similar articles were written about Facebook and Twitter and now Twitter is getting 370k new accounts per day. It just takes time.

Personally, I find the social network features of Tumblr really jumbled and confusing as an outsider. LiveJournal was a social network, too, and it plateaued.

Re: Tumblr Leaves Posterous in the Dust

#22

Post by kordless »

jacobian wrote: post #4

I've got to admit to taking a certain guilty pleasure in these numbers after Posterous' last campaign to get switchers. They were pompous, arrogent, and unnecessarily slagged on their competition. I'm pleased to see that such nasty tactics (apparently) paid little dividends.

Wow, that's harsh man. Back earlier in the year I switched to them for my blog for a site I run on the side. Long story, but in a fit of infrastructure floundering I misconfigured my DNS settings and ended up sending them ALL my traffic. Gary went above and beyond by 'fixing' the issue with some internal routing trickery, and then kindly letting me know what I did that next morning.

I felt pretty sheepish about it, but I never got the impression those guys were any of the things you say here. To each his own!

Re: Tumblr Leaves Posterous in the Dust

#24

Post by Tyrannosaurs »

webwright wrote: post #21

There's a timeshifting problem at work here. If Tumblr was indeed first to market, then it SHOULD be ahead. They are similar products with similar (viral) growth styles. A more interesting questions would be this: Is Posterous growing as fast as Tumblr when Tumblr was at this stage/age. Similar articles were written about Facebook and Twitter and now Twitter is getting 370k new accounts per day. It just takes time. P…

Posterous was a year later than Tumblr but first to market doesn't count for as much as some people make out.

For social sites (Twitter, Facebook etc.) it's important because of the network effects but to read and interact with a blog on a particular site you don't need to have a blog on that site yourself (else we'd all still have LiveJournals). That means age or growth doesn't mean too much.

Of course that counts for Tumblr too which means that you've got to look at more standard factors for growth - functionality, cost, brand awareness and so on - and in these areas Tumblr seems to have an advantage which I suspect is why it's growing faster.

Re: Tumblr Leaves Posterous in the Dust

#25

Post by zalew »

nhebb wrote: post #17

I don't post to either, but Tumblr makes it 100x easier to explore content on the site. Posterous doesn't even try - they bury the "Explore" link on the bottom of the home page and clicking that just gets the visitor a list of random and unorganized posts.

Exactly. Also, tumblr is full of NSFW blogs and that's a huge boost in visits.

Re: Tumblr Leaves Posterous in the Dust

#26

Post by scorpion032 »

jacobian wrote: post #4

I've got to admit to taking a certain guilty pleasure in these numbers after Posterous' last campaign to get switchers. They were pompous, arrogent, and unnecessarily slagged on their competition. I'm pleased to see that such nasty tactics (apparently) paid little dividends.

"Dying platforms" was the phrase they used, IIRC. Was in a bad taste, for sure.

Re: Tumblr Leaves Posterous in the Dust

#28

Post by scorpion032 »

ziadbc wrote: post #5

These two services have similarities, but someone could just have well written an article that says "Wordpress leaves Tumblr and Posterous in the dust." I like the idea of a YC company taking on an existing one head on once in awhile, rather than looking for an overtly specific niche. Posterous still has a ton of users, and I think at one point and time the digg vs reddit chart looked pretty similar. Look at it today…

Digg let down themselves. I doubt Tumblr is going to do. If nothing else, they have a decent design taste. That alone is enough to survive and multiply.

Re: Tumblr Leaves Posterous in the Dust

#29

Post by Legion »

zalew wrote: post #25
nhebb wrote: post #17

I don't post to either, but Tumblr makes it 100x easier to explore content on the site. Posterous doesn't even try - they bury the "Explore" link on the bottom of the home page and clicking that just gets the visitor a list of random and unorganized posts.

Exactly. Also, tumblr is full of NSFW blogs and that's a huge boost in visits.

That point is exactly the first thing I thought of when I read the article. How much of Tumblr's traffic is for "photo blogs" of naked girls? Based on what I've observed, probably a good amount.

Not that that traffic is somehow invalid, but I think it makes the comparison a bit more apples-to-oranges.

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