Upcoming blog provider Tumblr (www.tumblr.com) - has over the past 3 days deleted tens of thousands of it's customers blogs in an effort to intercept what they see as 'spammers' abusing their free service.
After being touted as a 'good, free service for basic content hosting' by Internet marketers from the Immediate Edge Group and the Thirty Day Challenge (www.thirtydaychallenge.com) - many saw the referral by the Immediate Edge; as a big positive endorsement of Tumblr and a chance for the new upcoming blogging service by Davidville Inc (Davidville is a privately held New York-based development company) to compete with the big boys of the blogging world: Google's Blogger.com and Wordpress.com.
Fearing spamming issues; Tumblr pulled the trigger and deleted in the region's of 20,000 accounts, blocking new and existing customers they felt maybe using their service for financial gain.
The decision by Tumblr is an interesting one; not only has it cost them a massive influx of new accounts and a wave of free advertising and web recognition - they have reportedly killed some of their existing users in their haste to delete new blogs created.
After being alerted to the backlash from Tumblr - the free tuition course creators from The 30 Day Challenge came out to discuss the situation and clam their anxious followers. In response Ed Dale has asked his patrons "To respect Tumblrs decision and urged web marketers to use many of the other free and capable services online from Google, Squioo, Wordpress and others."
The 30 Day Challenge run by Ed Dale and his Immediate Edge team has seen traffic figures many webmasters and companies only dream of - their website going from 0 to the top 5000 online according to the Alexa Online Ranking systems. Dale and his team are teaching average internet users how to profit from generating good unique content and getting it ranked highly by Google.
The forums at the 30 Day Challenge HQ have seen in excess of 20,000 posts - simply unheard of within 20 days and the web traffic they have generated will simply be pointed in another direction after Tumblr have closed their doors on the possible new wave of accounts.
So not only was Tumblr given an influx of 20,000 new user accounts virtually overnight - all of these accounts had the potential to explode Tumblrs recognition online due to highly ranked content within Google as coached by Dale and his team. Tumblrs domain would be there for all to see as they searched terms on Google.
It's amazing in the day and age of Web 2.0 that some companies simply don't understand the concept of traffic, brand recognition and future asset value. It seems Tumblr has a good product; their decision to turn away approx. 20,000 accounts and miss a future traffic generation possibility of several million through Google rankings - is simply jaw dropping.
Those guys over at YouTube took a few years to get their first large batch of accounts, and what followed was a brand now recognised the world over - but hey, they only made a few million dollars when they sold YouTube to Google.
The team that run Tumblr must already have plenty in the bank.
Tumblr turns visitors away
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16 Comments:
Couldn't agree with you more. Truly a decision in the line of the one by IBM many years ago when stating that personal computers will never take of and they will never get into that market.
tumblr have a good product; they could have saved themselves a year of traffic generation and marketing - but they may have smacked a gift horse in the mouth.
The 30 Day Challenge "word of mouth" recommendation of this relatively new blogging platform was a viral marketing dream come true. Unfortunately it looks like tumblr wasn't prepared - hope they are able to figure something out soon - and not loose out.
I do respect their decision, even if it's a crappy one for sure...
MySpace made billions - YouTube made billions... let's see if Tumblr can live by thin air.
I thank you guys never read what Tumblr was meant to be. If everyone had stuck to the spirit of the site...
They've made a massive blunder for certain. That is unless they actually don't want to be popular and a success.
I agree it was extremely bad business and a knee jerk reaction. Most of us are trying to legitimately develop good, helpful, original content that would only benefit Tumblr. They blindly deleted blogs without looking at content and determining if it was spam. What annoyed me more was the lack of professionalism in Marco's response on his blog and joyful glee in taking down sites. I want to know who died and made him Content God.
The reason the Thirty Day challengers started using Tumblr was because it was an easy, simple platform for a lot of new people to cut their teeth on.Most people just wanted to get some good, helpful and quality content which would have been of real benefit to people (if this is not in the 'spirit' of Tumblr-then I don't know what is)! Definitely a knee-jerk reaction by Tumblr.
What goes around comes around.They
have made there choice . Now will
see what happens.
"The 30 Day Challenge "word of mouth" recommendation of this relatively new blogging platform was a viral marketing dream come true."
And he blew it... I respect his decision but a knee jerk reaction typically results in a poor decision - like his.
Not everyone in the challenge is "new". Their are many respected names with subscriber bases in the 10,000+ range.
Good news travels. Bad news travels twice as fast and is shared twice as much.
Enjoy your day.
Thank God he deleted those worthless spam blogs. Get a real job, bloggers!
To say all the blogs were spam is a very knee-jerk reaction. To say that all the blogs were good content blogs is also a naive reaction. Concentrate on creating quality blogs and you'll have no problem.
For tumblr, it will be interesting how this all turns out....
ha! tough shit tumblr (or any tumblelog for that matter) is NOT for marketing, spamming or whatever.
The problem is as I see it that among the 30 day challengers there was a small percentage who thought hey, this is great. Get ranked in a few hours, post some rubbish content with loads of affiliate links and make a fortune. I believe the majority of challengers did listen and posted some excellent content. It's very sad that Tumblr weren't more selective with the blogs they banned. I feel sorry for the folks who don't even know about the 30DC who had their accounts suspended. Also, people are going to get a bit p*ssed off when they search for something on Google and get taken to the Tumblr homepage. They have not done themselves any favours.
Bravo to Tumblr for sticking to the purpose of their platform. 30DC should have recommended a more appropriate service to begin with. Pick any blogging service to create your fantastic compelling original content; tumblelogs are about snapshots, not oil-on-canvas masterpieces. Tumblelogs are about observing, commenting, sharing... not proselytizing and monetizing.
All you people deriding Tumblr's big missed opportunity for traffic, viral marketing, and untold billions are demonstrating your own one-track view of the web.
Tumblr has a nice feel and a nice community. The fact that they don't want to host a jillion AdSense flytrap "blogs" doesn't mean they are short-sighted or stupid.
They made a poo poo on this one.
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