The cool kid on the blogging block, Tumblr was arguably the first mainstream service to combine blogging and social media…leading eventually to Yahoo stumping up $1.1 billion to buy it.
Tumblr has a strong community of users, much like Twitter or Facebook, thanks to the ease in which other users’ content can be reblogged to your Tumblr account. That makes it a different kind of platform to the likes of WordPress, and users — particularly of the younger generation — tend to turn to Tumblr blogs to curate items that they like rather than produce their own content.
More benefits: Tumblr supports custom domain names and is ludicrously easy to use from mobile, including photo uploads. As of May 2014, it also blog theme customization via its mobile apps.
Pros: Owned by Yahoo — Tumblr was almost out of money when Yahoo swooped in to buy it.
Cons: Owned by Yahoo — Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has hinted that ads could make their way to Tumblr blogs.
Verdict: More of a social network than a blog, but a good option if you seek something quick and easy. Indeed, we’re noticing increasing numbers of companies that keep Tumblr blogs, often separately to their main blogs.
