The days of jumping on the next social bandwagon whenever it pulls into digi-town are well and truly over. Everyone is a little older, and wiser to false prophets. So when we recommend investigation, we mean it.
Tumblr, of course, is nothing new. The microblogging platform was founded in 2007, and today accounts for 130.5million blogs. Which is part of the reason Yahoo paid a reported $1.1million for it earlier this year. But another, recent deal is more interesting from a marketing perspective, as it means this loyally used website is now far more beneficial for businesses than ever before.
In the last few weeks, Tumblr has taken significant steps towards reaching an agreement with DataSift, a social analytics giant. Once in place, companies will have access to real-time and historic data relating to sentiment about and references to brands, firms, financial markets, news and public opinion within the community.
All of which are extremely useful to companies looking for an insight into who’s saying what, about which products and people, on this network. And the development follows the launch of the first ever free analytics tool for Tumblr, run by Union Metrics. A no-budget version of a larger subscription service, it offers feedback on content being reblogged, identifies key amplifiers and analyses the performance of different types of posts over time. Again, this is vital information if you’re spending time and money on Tumblr.
At the moment the latter is still an invite-only set up; to express an interest click here. As for the first talking point, it will be a little while before we see any of the additions and extra data come to fruition. Nevertheless, as the latest major move to monetise a social network, clearly the boffins in charge believe they have something worth selling with Tumblr, in advertising terms. Which means it’s up to you to decide on whether you can afford not to take an interest.