The Tumblr Revival is Real - and Gen Z is Leading the Charge (fastcompany.com) 35
"Gen Z is rediscovering Tumblr — a chaotic, cozy corner of the internet untouched by algorithmic gloss and influencer overload..." writes Fast Company, "embracing the platform as a refuge from an internet saturated with influencers and algorithm fatigue."
Thanks to Gen Z, the site has found new life. As of 2025, Gen Z makes up 50% of Tumblr's active monthly users and accounts for 60% of new sign-ups, according to data shared with Business Insider's Amanda Hoover, who recently reported on the platform's resurgence. User numbers spiked in January during the near-ban of TikTok and jumped again last year when Brazil temporarily banned X. In response, Tumblr users launched dedicated communities to archive and share their favorite TikToks...
To keep up with the momentum, Tumblr introduced Reddit-style Communities in December, letting users connect over shared interests like photography and video games. In January, it debuted Tumblr TV — a TikTok-like feature that serves as both a GIF search engine and a short-form video platform. But perhaps Tumblr's greatest strength is that it isn't TikTok or Facebook. Currently the 10th most popular social platform in the U.S., according to analytics firm Similarweb, Tumblr is dwarfed by giants like Instagram and X. For its users, though, that's part of the appeal.
First launched in 2007, Tumblr peaked at over 100 million users in 2014, according to the article. Trends like Occupy Wall Street had been born on Tumblr, notes Business Insider, calling the blogging platform "Gen Z's safe space... as the rest of the social internet has become increasingly commodified, polarized, and dominated by lifestyle influencers." Tumblr was also "one of the most hyped startups in the world before fading into obsolescence — bought by Yahoo for $1.1 billion in 2013... then acquired by Verizon, and later offloaded for fractions of pennies on the dollar in a distressed sale.
"That same Tumblr, a relic of many millennials' formative years, has been having a moment among Gen Z..." "Gen Z has this romanticism of the early-2000s internet," says Amanda Brennan, an internet librarian who worked at Tumblr for seven years, leaving her role as head of content in 2021... Part of the reason young people are hanging out on old social platforms is that there's nowhere new to go. The tech industry is evolving at a slower pace than it was in the 2000s, and there's less room for disruption. Big Tech has a stranglehold on how we socialize. That leaves Gen Z to pick up the scraps left by the early online millennials and attempt to craft them into something relevant. They love Pinterest (founded in 2010) and Snapchat (2011), and they're trying out digital point-and-shoot cameras and flip phones for an early-2000s aesthetic — and learning the valuable lesson that sometimes we look better when blurrier.
More Gen Zers and millennials are signing up for Yahoo. Napster, surprising many people with its continued existence, just sold for $207 million. The trend is fueled by nostalgia for Y2K aesthetics and a longing for a time when people could make mistakes on the internet and move past them. The pandemic also brought more Gen Z users to Tumblr...
And Tumblr still works much like an older internet, where people have more control over what they see and rely less on algorithms. "You curate your own stuff; it takes a little bit of work to put everything in place, but when it's working, you see the content you want to see," Fjodor Everaerts, a 26-year-old in Belgium who has made some 250,000 posts since he joined Tumblr when he was 14... Under Automattic, Tumblr is finally in the home that serves it, [says Ari Levine, the head of brand partnerships at Tumblr]. "We've had ups and downs along the way, but we're in the most interesting position and place that we've been in 18 years," he says... And following media companies (including Business Insider) and social platforms like Reddit, Automattic in 2024 was making a deal with OpenAI and Midjourney to allow the systems to train on Tumblr posts.
"The social internet is fractured," the article argues. ("Millennials are running Reddit. Gen Xers and Baby Boomers have a home on Facebook. Bluesky, one of the new X alternatives, has a tangible elder-millennial/Gen X vibe. Gen Zers have created social apps like BeReal and the Myspace-inspired Noplace, but they've so far generated more hype than influence....")
But in a world where megaplatforms "flatten our online experiences and reward content that fits a mold," the article suggests, "smaller communities can enrich them."
To keep up with the momentum, Tumblr introduced Reddit-style Communities in December, letting users connect over shared interests like photography and video games. In January, it debuted Tumblr TV — a TikTok-like feature that serves as both a GIF search engine and a short-form video platform. But perhaps Tumblr's greatest strength is that it isn't TikTok or Facebook. Currently the 10th most popular social platform in the U.S., according to analytics firm Similarweb, Tumblr is dwarfed by giants like Instagram and X. For its users, though, that's part of the appeal.
First launched in 2007, Tumblr peaked at over 100 million users in 2014, according to the article. Trends like Occupy Wall Street had been born on Tumblr, notes Business Insider, calling the blogging platform "Gen Z's safe space... as the rest of the social internet has become increasingly commodified, polarized, and dominated by lifestyle influencers." Tumblr was also "one of the most hyped startups in the world before fading into obsolescence — bought by Yahoo for $1.1 billion in 2013... then acquired by Verizon, and later offloaded for fractions of pennies on the dollar in a distressed sale.
"That same Tumblr, a relic of many millennials' formative years, has been having a moment among Gen Z..." "Gen Z has this romanticism of the early-2000s internet," says Amanda Brennan, an internet librarian who worked at Tumblr for seven years, leaving her role as head of content in 2021... Part of the reason young people are hanging out on old social platforms is that there's nowhere new to go. The tech industry is evolving at a slower pace than it was in the 2000s, and there's less room for disruption. Big Tech has a stranglehold on how we socialize. That leaves Gen Z to pick up the scraps left by the early online millennials and attempt to craft them into something relevant. They love Pinterest (founded in 2010) and Snapchat (2011), and they're trying out digital point-and-shoot cameras and flip phones for an early-2000s aesthetic — and learning the valuable lesson that sometimes we look better when blurrier.
More Gen Zers and millennials are signing up for Yahoo. Napster, surprising many people with its continued existence, just sold for $207 million. The trend is fueled by nostalgia for Y2K aesthetics and a longing for a time when people could make mistakes on the internet and move past them. The pandemic also brought more Gen Z users to Tumblr...
And Tumblr still works much like an older internet, where people have more control over what they see and rely less on algorithms. "You curate your own stuff; it takes a little bit of work to put everything in place, but when it's working, you see the content you want to see," Fjodor Everaerts, a 26-year-old in Belgium who has made some 250,000 posts since he joined Tumblr when he was 14... Under Automattic, Tumblr is finally in the home that serves it, [says Ari Levine, the head of brand partnerships at Tumblr]. "We've had ups and downs along the way, but we're in the most interesting position and place that we've been in 18 years," he says... And following media companies (including Business Insider) and social platforms like Reddit, Automattic in 2024 was making a deal with OpenAI and Midjourney to allow the systems to train on Tumblr posts.
"The social internet is fractured," the article argues. ("Millennials are running Reddit. Gen Xers and Baby Boomers have a home on Facebook. Bluesky, one of the new X alternatives, has a tangible elder-millennial/Gen X vibe. Gen Zers have created social apps like BeReal and the Myspace-inspired Noplace, but they've so far generated more hype than influence....")
But in a world where megaplatforms "flatten our online experiences and reward content that fits a mold," the article suggests, "smaller communities can enrich them."
Ironically, this is why I keep browsing slashdot.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
Welcome to Slashdot, you must be new here. It's been turned into a politically driven ragebait forum with awful, vibes-based moderation based on mood affiliation rather than strength of evidence or quality of argument.
Re: Ironically, this is why I keep browsing slashd (Score:2)
I'm seeing the same things the GP was seeing. Moderation has never been so abused as it is now.
Re: (Score:2)
And yet, it's still one of the better/more informative discussion forums.
I'm not saying it's not gone downhill, just not as bad as the rest of the internet.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree with all of that.
And yet, the abusive moderation still irks
Re: (Score:2)
I guess that's why we're both still here 20+ years later...
Re: Ironically, this is why I keep browsing slash (Score:3)
Re:Ironically, this is why I keep browsing slashdo (Score:5, Informative)
It's 2 bad /. won't easily accept new users as shown in https://slashdot.org/my/newuse... [slashdot.org]. :(
Re: Ironically, this is why I keep browsing slashd (Score:2)
That doesn't say they won't accept new users.
Re: (Score:2)
TBH, I don't know a time when Slashdot didn't have a significant amount of ragebait, not even during the CmdrTaco years.
The Tumblr Cycle (Score:2)
One generation must abandon it for the next to mold it in it's own image.
Re: (Score:2)
That's all part of the cycle. I bet in 5-10 years well be hearing about the Tumblr collapse again and then Gen ZZY or whatever will take it over while I am in a nursing home.
Re: (Score:2)
Been on Tumblr for 16 years.
I think I'm good for another 10.
Re: (Score:2)
They need to give you a class title over there, like the grand wizards of Tubmlr
Wait till they see this (Score:1)
IRC (Score:5, Funny)
Wait'll they discover IRC!
Re: (Score:2)
IRC FTW! I still use it and other ancient Internet services like the newsgroups. :)
WordPress (Score:4, Interesting)
Too bad Tumblr and WordPress are owned by the same company that is spearheaded by a total douchebag of a CEO. Once the Gen-Zers figure this out, they'll stage a mass protest and walk out from the site.
Re: (Score:2)
haha yeah, wait until Matt decides to 'get mad' because Tumblr isn't 'carrying it's own weight' and starts to f*ck with it.
Leading the Punch Line. (Score:3)
Claiming Gen Z is reviving Tumbr without porn is a bit like claiming Las Vegas is getting ready to explode in action because it’s 3PM and the elementary school just let out.
Don't worry. You’ll get the joke when someone explains to you what really built the internet.
Re: (Score:2)
I didn't know Al Gore was into porn.
Re: Leading the Punch Line. (Score:2)
Where do you think the rhythm comes from?
No one goes there any more (Score:2)
I guess this is the internet version of the old joke: "No one goes there any more, it's too crowded"
Modern recreation of vintage Myspace (Score:4, Informative)
Cool paint job but did ya check under the hood? (Score:3)
Web 2.0 is a massive fraud. Look a bunch of these new blogs and you'll see it immediately. This "article" is obviously not describing human behavior.
Metric inflation is a crime. It is fraud and platforms shouldn't be doing it.
Next Stop - Color64 BBS! (Score:1)
please, nobody tell them... (Score:1)
Tumblr's fall, rise, and inevitable fall, again (Score:2)
Hmmm. The way the automobile changed American culture after WWII gave teens and young adults the freedom to escape adult supervision and explore their identities away from prying eyes. I’m dating myself, but I think Bob Seger captured it perfectly in Night Moves—working on mysteries without any clues in the backseat at a drive-in, getting a taste of independence. I’m thinking that same kind of freedom is what Tumblr offers today for Gen Z. It’s a space where they can work on their ow
So they reversed their p0rn policy ? (Score:2)
If not, I doubt it will make inroads against reddit, which still has it, for now at least.