Karm City

Tumblr’s Business Model

Some thoughts on the New York Times article being published in tomorrow’s edition:

Tumblr just hired a “media evangelist” named Mark Coatney — an editor turned bus dev guy who’s responsible for monetizing future media partnerships. He used to work at Newsweek, which was the first major publication to utilize Tumblr as a publishing medium. Why did Newsweek adopt when nobody else would? According to Mark, “no one at Newsweek really knew what I was doing.”

Okay, so for other media conglomerates to adopt Tumblr, they just need to not know it’s happening. Check.

Also, “…do [media organizations] have the time and resources to work yet another Web outlet into their daily routine?”

Good question.

“Mr. Coatney estimated that posting links and notes to the Newsweek Twitter feed and Facebook page sent roughly 200,000 to 300,000 readers to Newsweek’s Web site each day. By comparison, Tumblr sent closer to 1,000.”

I think the better question is, “do people have the time and resources to work yet another Web outlet into their daily routine?” The answer is already apparent; they don’t.

Since Newsweek came on board, a few other big companies have signed up. Surely that’s good business news for Tumblr, right? “…many of those outlets have done little more than set up a placeholder page.”

Oh.

David Karp, the founder of Tumblr, shed some light on the company’s priorities when he said, “People are creating identities and personalities that Facebook and Twitter are not designed to allow you to do.” This sounds like the Tumblr of 2008 — when it was focused entirely on user generation. I’m not sure how that philosophy applies to partnering with more media companies.

“Mr. Coatney acknowledged that this might not be an easy sell, particularly when the payoff was not immediately obvious.” So your latest hire is already unsure of how viable this model is. Not a good sign. By the way, what is the payoff? The article doesn’t really say.

All in all, it sounds like there’s no solid strategy in place at Tumblr right now. They’re trying to monetize media partnerships — maybe. They aren’t sure. But hey, it’s also a great place to be creative as a person! At this point, the company’s been around for a while. It just raised some capital. It needs to figure out what the end game is.

I would like to note that I think Tumblr is an incredible platform for publishing. The best, even. It’s unbelievably versatile for many facets of content. In an ideal world, Facebook and Twitter would not exist and we’d be communicating productively here. But alas, that is not the case, ergo my points above.