What is Tumblr? How Microblogging Works

Tumblr refers to itself as a platform for short-form microblogging, also known as tumblelogging, a name that predates Tumblr itself. The blogging platform 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. The Tumblr app is available on all major smart phones today.

In recent years, Tumblr's traffic dynamics have illustrated a microblogging platform in flux, navigating the challenges of changing internet habits and policy decisions. With a monthly active user base of 135 million globally, Tumblr stands as a significant player in the social media landscape, even as it contends with the ebbs and flows of digital engagement.

The platform's decision to ban adult content in 2018 marked a pivotal moment, leading to a noticeable dip in traffic — from a peak of 521 million visitors in 2018 to 213 million in 2023. Despite this decline, Tumblr has maintained its relevance, ranking as the 103rd most visited website globally as of April 2023, with 222.7 million visitors.

Using Tumblr is as easy as using e-mail — which is how a Tumblr account is created. Simply sign up with an e-mail address and a password, choose a user name, and start blogging. (The user name does not have to be the same as the blog's title, by the way.)

On the user's blog entry page (accessible via the Dashboard, which we'll talk more about in a second), Tumblr guides the blogging process with icons for text, photo, quotes, links, chat, audio or video. Click on the correct one, enter in the materials, and then click "post" at the end (or, queue it, or set it to run on a specific date).

Users can have more than one blog. But Tumblr is a social network, too. Tumblr users connect by subscribing to other Tumblr blogs. This way, any time an author updates with a new article, picture, video or shared item, it shows up in the Dashboards of his or her subscribers.

The Dashboard is Tumblr's main interface. Similar to a Facebook news feed, it plainly displays, in reverse chronological order (most recent at the top), all activity by the user and the blogs he or she follows. (Tip: scroll through posts easily by pressing the "J" key while in the Dashboard.)

From the Dashboard, users may give "notes" to the posts they enjoy most. They can do this in several ways:

On the Dashboard, each post has a little box with a number in it — that's a tally of how many total notes have been given. Clicking on that number unfurls below the post, which shows which users have noted the post, and how. (Visiting the sites of people who liked the same thing that you did is a great way to find new Tumblr blogs to follow.)

A sidebar demonstrates how many posts the user has liked, as well as blogs he or she follows and suggestions as to other blogs the user might like. (For a small fee, Tumblr will feature your blog, either on the sidebar, or by pegging it to the top of subscribers' dashboards for a certain period of time.)

The blog's got content. But how should it look? Read on to learn about customization.

Tumblr users see the blogs that they subscribe to, as well their own posts and notes, on the Dashboard interface. But the public "face" of a Tumblr blog goes out to the whole of the Internet (unless privacy features are enabled), which means that they require some cosmetic maintenance. Users can fully customize their Tumblr sites, changing the colors and fonts, how pictures are displays, where modules are presented, and so on. Tumblr makes it easy for the non-computer coder to do so by offering dozens of free site templates, which it calls "Themes."

Here's how you set up a theme. First, go to your site's page on the Dashboard. Then, open the "customize theme" module. Tumblr provides a pull-down theme menu, with thumbnail images of themes currently available, many designed by other Tumblr users. Based on what you'll be using your Tumblr for, there are several theme options available. A blogger can choose from single, double or triple column (for a text-heavy, photo-light newspaper layout), or high-resolution (for a photo-dominant blog), for example. Most themes are free, although Tumblr does sell "premium" themes.

Once you find a theme you like, you can install it with the push of a button. With a dummy example page, you're then free to explore the customizable features. From this page, you can change the background color (or pattern, or an uploaded image), entry text size and color, the site's title and description, and even how many older entries you want displayed your page. (It also allows for user-generated code injection.) You can fiddle with anything here.

Beyond the click-and-make-it-happen interface, all themes and all customizable features can also be altered with HTML editing, for the more code-savvy blogger or blogger who wants a very specific look out of his or her personal page. One more thing you can put on your Tumblr page: music. Read on to see how.

Part of the fun of Tumblr is that blogs and posts are customizable to the unique specifications of the user: Pictures and text are a big part of the experience, of course, but music can be added to a Tumblr site, as well. This creative combination is what distinguishes Tumblr from other social media sites.

The easiest way to share music is by composing an audio post. On the user's navigation page are a number of post options: text, video, chat, and audio. Simply press the icon that looks like a purple pair of headphones. That takes the user to a new blog post window. Instead of offering an empty space for a title, Tumblr presents an empty bar with a magnifying glass icon, into which you can upload a music file (in MP3 format, 10 MB in size or less) from the user's computer, or a URL of a song from somewhere on the internet.

Tumblr has partnered with Spotify and Soundcloud for this feature. Spotify is a free or premium service that allows access to hundreds of thousands of songs from major and independent labels, while Soundcloud has tons of user-generated and uploaded songs, many from unsigned or independent bands. Both services allow users to share songs in the form of a web address, which is easily entered into the audio post window of Tumblr.

Tumblr also offers automatic, autoplay background music. This means that, if enabled, the music plays on every page of the Tumblr user's blog. How it's done: The user utilizes a third-party plug-in. Bloggers upload the music they want, and the application renders it as HTML code. That code is then transplanted into Tumblr, in the user's theme customization portal. (It also allows users to place an opt out of autoplay button somewhere on the blog.) If the user wants the autoplay only on a specific post, it's done in the HTML editing display when composing an individual post.

This article was updated in conjunction with AI technology, then fact-checked and edited by a HowStuffWorks editor.