Tumblr is a network of millions of user-generated, personal Web sites. It's part blogging platform (like Wordpress, Blogger or Posterous) and part social networking service, letting users create and post their own original content. Written entries, photographs, video clips or links to other Web sites -- you can share all of these things with your friends and followers. Users subscribe to as many other users' pages as they like, which show up on the user's feed, or Dashboard. It's also possible to give "notes" to other subscribers in several forms -- you can reblog someone's content on that user's Tumblr site, "like" it, or reply. To further the social aspect, authors can opt to post their Tumblr entries simultaneously, or at least link to them, via other services, such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Tumblr refers to itself as a platform for short-form microblogging, also known as tumblelogging, a name that predates Tumblr itself. As of 2012, Tumblr hosts more than 64 million "tumblelogs." More than 13 million people visit Tumblr a month, most of them with their own active blogs. Each day, 25,000 new users sign up for the site, and altogether, 71.6 million new Tumblr blog entries, photos, videos and audio files are posted each day. Although you don't have to be a registered user of Tumblr to read others people's Tumblr blogs, you do have to be registered if you want to leave notes.
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Tumblr went live in 2007, launched by Internet entrepreneur David Karp and lead designer Marco Arment. Within two weeks, 75,000 people had jumped on to Tumblr to enjoy a site that's not much different than it is today. In 2009, the company bought third-party app Tumblrette, which allowed a simplified interface with Tumblr on the iPhone. It's available as an app on all major smart phones today.
How do you start your own blog on Tumblr? It's not hard at all. Read on to learn more.
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