Tumblr operates a blogging community platform where users create and share blogs and posts. The company reported rapid audience growth, saying monthly pageviews rose from 2 billion to 13 billion this year and mobile pageviews increased 17x. Tumblr also reported hitting 400 million pageviews in a single day, about 30 million blogs created, more than 40 million posts generated daily, and passing 10 billion total posts. The team expanded from 15 to 50 employees this year, and the company released a revamped iPhone app that helped drive usage. Financially, Tumblr raised new funding that brings its total capital raised to over $125 million; the valuation for the latest round was not disclosed. Tumblr is a social blogging platform whose core product is a Dashboard that shows a stream of posts from people users follow. Founder David Karp says the site has seen hockey-stick growth, adding about 250 million pageviews per week; last week it hit 1.2 billion impressions and roughly 4.2 billion pageviews over the prior 30 days. comScore estimated 2.5 billion pageviews for December, up from 335 million the year before, and reports about 19 million unique monthly visitors globally. The company reports 65% of pageviews come from users viewing their Dashboards. Tumblr attributes recent growth to college students (who adopted the service heavily since roughly September 2009) and international expansion in Europe, Japan, and Brazil. To address capacity and reliability issues caused by the surge, the team is working round the clock to scale infrastructure and catch up with demand. Tumblr is a lightweight blog publishing and management service that emphasizes microblogging. The company recently rolled out paid themes as its second premium feature and has added static pages, photo replies, video uploads, and a form of comments. Founder David Karp (23) said there are “a dozen more in the pipeline.” The service surpassed 4 million registered users and is generating 1 billion page views a month, up from 2 million bloggers and 420 million monthly impressions half a year earlier. Tumblr is actively exploring ways to generate revenue from the service as it adds premium features. The company has raised $10 million in venture capital to date. Tumblr is a blogging platform that launched in 2007 and gained rapid early momentum by lowering the bar for starting a blog. The company currently serves zero ads on its pages and, according to the article, has generated an equal amount of dollars so far. Tumblr plans to introduce paid premium services to begin monetizing, though the specifics of those services were not disclosed. The company reported over 15 million monthly unique visitors in a release, while ComScore measured about 1.5 million global unique visitors in October. Leadership changes accompanying growth include John Borthwick joining the board and John Maloney acting as President. CEO David Karp said the new funding gives the company a runway of at least two and a half years.

Total raised

$125M

Funding rounds

4

Latest round

Equity

Latest activity

Sep 2011