Ryan Reynolds has joined Tumblr amid the Twitter turmoil
(Picture: Getty Images)Ryan Reynolds has joined social media platform Tumblr following Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter.
Celebrities including Gigi Hadid and Shonda Rhimes have announced their exit from Twitter since the billionaire bought the social platform, sparking questions about whether social media users will flock to existing platforms like Instagram and Facebook, or seek out alternatives like Mastodon.
But Tumblr is another platform that could gain users due to the Twitter turmoil, particularly following last week’s announcement that it would be lifting its 2018 ban on adult content, which resulted in a dip in popularity.
Now with Hollywood star Ryan Reynolds joining the app, Tumblr is back in the headlines. But his joining has also provoked a debate about what users actually want from a social media platform.
Reynolds’ debut post was a Deadpool meme and he has since posted a number of GIFs of himself, including one featuring his Wrexham football club co-owner and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia star Rob McElhenney.
While many fans were delighted to welcome him to the platform, others are hesitant to embrace celebrities joining Tumblr, lest it become another Twitter.
Millennials, or anyone active on the internet in the 2010s, will be familiar with Tumblr. But for the uninitiated, what is Tumblr and how does it compare to other social media spaces?
What is Tumblr?
Tumblr is a blogging platform for users to post and repost photos, videos, GIFs, music and text. Tumblr users can curate their profiles, which often follow particular aesthetic themes.
Users can follow other blogs and like or reblog posts to their blog. Unlike other social media platforms, like Instagram and Twitter, users cannot see how many followers a blog has – only the blog owner can.
It also has a Q&A feature where followers can ask creators questions as well as a messaging function. Tumblr used to let users edit the posts they reblogged but this feature was taken away as it was used to misrepresent what the original poster had said.
The first rule of Tumblr is to have fun and be yourself.
— tumblr dot com the website and app (@tumblr) November 7, 2022
Tumblr users create blogs about specific interests, such as TV shows, movies, fashion, art, travel, books and more. As a result, Tumblr is made up of niche communities based on shared interests and hobbies. The platform became an aesthetic in the early 2010s.
In January of this year, Vogue declared that the 2014 Tumblr Girl is back – a look defined by pop culture icons like Lana Del Rey, Lorde and The 1975, and soft grunge fashion inspired by the likes of Skins’ Effy Stonem.
The social media platform was influential online and its users launched a number of still-popular internet memes.
The viral black and blue or white and gold dress originated on Tumblr, as did memes like McKayla is Not Impressed.
well theyre not wrong pic.twitter.com/XdqN2I1p8f
— tumblr dot com the website and app (@tumblr) November 7, 2022
In 2015, the Pricenomics data team discovered that Tumblr was the number one source for Buzzfeed’s content – coming out on top of Instagram, YouTube and Reddit, as reported by the Washington Post.
Did celebrities use Tumblr?
Unlike Twitter and Instagram, Tumblr was not really a space for celebrities. Blogs focused more on artistic or creative posts rather than selfies or promotional personal posts.
However, as a teenager, reality TV and social media star Kylie Jenner was a big fan of Tumblr. Before she was the most followed woman on Instagram (with more than 372 million followers), Jenner had a popular Tumblr blog.
She would post fashion inspiration posts alongside selfies featuring dip-dyed hair and chokers, and had a fan in big sister Kim Kardashian, who would reference Kylie’s Tumblr in meetings with stylists.
Author and YouTuber John Green was another popular Tumblr figure.
His novels (and their subsequent movie adaptations) The Fault in Our Stars, Paper Towns, and Looking for Alaska, provided countless quotes, stills, GIFs and fanart for moody teen blogs, alongside Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower.
Green even compared Musk’s Twitter purchase to his Tumblr clout, saying: “It’s as if in 2014, I’d been like, ‘I’ll just buy tumblr.’"
It's as if in 2014, I'd been like, "I'll just buy tumblr."
— John Green (@johngreen) November 7, 2022
However, Green was unhappy with his posts being edited by others in derogatory ways, which was then possible, and he left the platform. Perhaps Green’s situation should be a case study in why Tumblr isn’t for celebs.
Who owns Tumblr?
Tumblr was founded in 2007 by David Karp and was particularly popular from about 2012 to 2014.
At the peak of its popularity, Yahoo acquired Tumblr in 2013 for $1.1 billion dollars (£960 million). However, in December 2018, Tumblr decided to ban adult content from the platform and began losing users.
In 2019, Automattic, which owns Wordpress, purchased Tumblr for less than $3 million (£2.6 million).
