Introduction:

Tumblr (stylized as tumblr and pronounced "tumbler") is an American microblogging and social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007 and currently owned by Automattic Inc. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a short-form blog. Users can follow other users' blogs. Bloggers can also make their blogs private. For bloggers many of the website's features are accessed from a "dashboard" interface.

History:

Development of Tumblr began in 2006 during a two-week gap between contracts at David Karp's software consulting company, Davidville. Karp had been interested in tumblelogs (short-form blogs, hence the name Tumblr) for some time and was waiting for one of the established blogging platforms to introduce their own tumblelogging platform. As none had done so after a year of waiting, Karp and developer Marco Arment began working on their own platform. Tumblr was launched in February 2007, and within two weeks had gained 75,000 users. Arment left the company in September 2010 to work on Instapaper.

Blog Management:

• Dashboard: The dashboard is the primary tool for the typical Tumblr user. It is a live feed of recent posts from blogs that they follow. Through the dashboard, users are able to comment, reblog, and like posts from other blogs that appear on their dashboard. The dashboard allows the user to upload text posts, images, videos, quotes, or links to their blog with a click of a button displayed at the top of the dashboard. Users are also able to connect their blogs to their Twitter and Facebook accounts; so whenever they make a post, it will also be sent as a tweet and a status update.
• Queue: Users are able to set up a schedule to delay posts that they make. They can spread their posts over several hours or even days.
• Tags: Users can help their audience find posts about certain topics by adding tags. If someone were to upload a picture to their blog and wanted their viewers to find pictures, they would add the tag #picture , and their viewers could use that word to search for posts with the tag #picture .
• HTML editing: Tumblr allows users to edit their blog's theme HTML coding to control the appearance of their blog. Users are also able to use a custom domain name for their blog.

Mobile:

With Tumblr's 2009 acquisition of Tumblerette, an iOS application created by Jeff Rock and Garrett Ross, the service launched its official iPhone app. The site became available to BlackBerry smartphones on April 17, 2010, via a Mobelux application in BlackBerry World. In June 2012, Tumblr released a new version of its iOS app, Tumblr 3.0, allowing support for Spotify integration, hi-res images and offline access. An app for Android is also available. A Windows Phone app was released on April 23, 2013. An app for Google Glass was released on May 16, 2013.

Messaging:

Tumblr blogs have the option to allow users to submit questions, either as themselves or anonymously, to the blog for a response. Tumblr also offers a "fan mail" function, allowing users to send messages to blogs that they follow.

Storyboard:

In May 2012, Tumblr launched Storyboard, a blog managed by an in-house editorial team which features stories and videos about noteworthy blogs and users on Tumblr. In April 2013, Storyboard was shut down.