Up 218 percent compared to the same period of last year

Aug 31, 2011 19:06 GMT  ·  By

Being a micro-blogging platform, Tumblr may not be able to compare with Facebook and Twitter in terms of popularity or accessibility, but it still manages to grow at an accelerated rate: it got more than 13 million unique visitors in July.

Since Tumblr targets a totally different audience than the ones of the aforementioned social networks, it means that only dedicated users will create accounts and are more likely to access Tumblr on a regular basis.

However, commitment alone cannot explain the amazing increase in unique visitors that the platform recorded in July 2011.

In a study recently published, comScore considers Tumblr to be ‘one of the fastest growing consumer-oriented Internet sites over the past year.’

It seems that in July 2010 the service recorded 4.2 million visitors whereas in July 2011 the number got to 13.4 million.

Furthermore, the pace accelerated the most from April to July when Tumblr attracted a total of 5 million visitors in just three months.

comScore explains this ascending trend by what they call the network effect which states that ‘the more users that are part of the system, the more valuable the system becomes to users.’

This is emphasized by the fact that Tumblr is most popular among teenagers and college-aged users, with as much as half of its visitor base being aged 25 and less.

It is known that youngsters typically share details about the sites they like and which they frequently visit, thus stirring curiosity and interest without even trying to promote a certain service.

The question that arises from the comScore study is whether Tumblr will be able to expand its audience beyond the this age group and to become attractive to those aged who are more than 25 years old.

In all fairness, they have proven that they can catch up to a traditional platform and become a serious opponent to WordPress, so chances are that they will also be able to adapt to users’ needs and accommodate them, regardless of their age.

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Tumblr more than doubled its unique visitors since July 2010
Tumblr is most popular among youngsters
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