New Research Paper: “What is Tumblr: A Statistical Overview and Comparison”

The following research paper written by members of the Yahoo Research team. Yahoo acquired Tumblr on May 20, 2013.

Title

What is Tumblr: A Statistical Overview and Comparison

Authors

Yi Chang
Lei Tang
Yoshiyuki Inagaki
Yan Liu

Affiliations

Yahoo Labs (All Authors)

Source

via arXiv

Abstract

Tumblr, as one of the most popular microblogging platforms, has gained momentum recently. It is reported to have 166.4 millions of users and 73.4 billions of posts by January 2014.
While many articles about Tumblr have been published in major press, there is not much scholar work so far. In this paper, we provide some pioneer analysis on Tumblr from a variety of aspects. We study the social network structure among Tumblr users, analyze its user generated content, and describe reblogging patterns to analyze its user behavior.
We aim to provide a comprehensive statistical overview of Tumblr and compare it with other popular social services, including blogosphere, Twitter and Facebook, in answering a couple of key questions: What is Tumblr? How is Tumblr different from other social media networks? In short, we find Tumblr has more rich content than other microblogging platforms, and it contains hybrid characteristics of social networking, traditional blogosphere, and social media. This work serves as an early snapshot of Tumblr that later work can leverage.”

Direct to Full Text (11 pages; PDF)

Filed under: Journal Articles, News, Patrons and Users