Who’s been sleeping in my Tumblr?

The brands that are missing out on the emerging social network

October 21^st 2011 was a big day for Tumblr. It became the first blogging platform to host President Obama’s blog, launching his social media campaign for re-election in 2012.

Obama’s choice (clearly influenced by socially savvy members of his campaign team) brought Tumblr to the attention of the world’s media, including those who had not previously come across the network or had assumed it was only a place to share funny photos of cats. However this attention is long overdue.

In June of this year the network founded in 2007 by David Karp surpassed WordPress in the total number of blogs, breaking through the 20 million mark. It now has over 33 million and rising.

Nielsen’s State of the Media report on Social Media for Q3 2011 highlights Tumblr as the ‘Emerging Social Network’ citing the trebling of its US audience over the last year.

In the UK its growth has been impressive too with 7.5m unique visitors, 5.4m of whom visit in an average month. London in particular seems to be in love with Tumblr.  Its residents make 1.6m visits to sites in the network. Only San Paulo in Brazil has more Tumblr fans.

Given that Tumblr’s UK audience is more female (52%) than male (48%) and many of its users are in the much coveted demographic of 18-24 year olds, it’s not hard to see why some brands, particularly in fashion and publishing, have been quick to jump onto the network.

Vogue, Life and Vice have all developed Tumblr sites as have many fashion brands. DKNY is a notable example having recently ported their ‘Notes on a City’ to Tumblr following on from the success of their ‘DKNY PR Girl’ site.

The Economist, The Washington Post and IBM have set up Tumblr blogs too, presumably hoping to earn kudos from a younger ‘edgier’ audience than they might usually attract. I’ve even set one up (for much the same reasons).

What is more surprising is the number of brands that haven’t caught on to it yet. I was pleased to see that Bing (a client of mine) has a fully functional Tumblr site, but was amazed to find that Google.tumblr.com is a blank holding page that appears to have nothing to do with the company itself.

Google is by no means alone. A search for many of the world’s top brands using their .Tumblr.com addresses brings up some surprising and sometimes shocking results. Nike, Adidas, Microsoft, Samsung, and Apple all appear to have people sleeping on their Tumblr’s. I find it hard to believe that any of the brand custodians or legal departments would be pleased about this. In the case of Coca-Cola, I imagine they would be horrified to see what is being displayed in their name. I can therefore only assume that these brands haven’t woken up to Tumblr yet. Like the proverbial bears in the story of Goldilocks, I don’t think they’ll be too happy when they do.

Although some brands are rushing to snap up their own top level brand domain names despite the costs involved, it seems extraordinary that so many have failed to register their own name on Tumblr, which is free and is fast becoming the social network to watch.

I expect this will change in the coming months, particularly if Tumblr continues its growth trajectory and builds insight tools for brands and marketers. When this happens, I imagine a few heads will tumble.

iPad Review: Don’t believe the hype – a million people can be wrong

A couple of weeks ago I launched the BNPC (Buy Normal Personal Computers) campaign to try and stop the flood of PC users switching to Apple. However, I’ve got to admit that so far things haven’t been going well. In fact it seems that more and more people are switching over to Apple products and the company is reporting record-breaking sales.

The new iPad hasn’t helped. On Monday Apple announced that 1 million had been sold in just 28 days. Less than half the time it took to shift the first million iPhones.

Although the iPad is not yet available in the UK, my company had one sent over from the US, and I got the chance to take it home over the Bank Holiday weekend to see what all the fuss is about.

Make no mistake, as with many first release products from Apple, it’s not perfect. Steve Jobs argument against Adobe’s Flash may be well founded, but not having Flash compatibility did limit my experience of the web.

The iPad lacks other features too, most notably a camera. While this was no great loss to me over the weekend, the absence of a viewfinder means that cool Augmented Reality apps such as Layar, will not work on an iPad, which seems a shame.

Another minor quibble is that the iPad feels surprisingly heavy when you’ve been holding it for a while, although this didn’t seem to bother any of my kids – even my two year old – it was noticeable to me as I spent hours playing Angry Birds (for research purposes of course).

More significant for me was the real sense of being in an Apple controlled ‘walled garden’ when using an iPad, with access to Music, Films, Apps, and e-books controlled by iTunes, the App store, and the new online Book Store. As a veteran Apple user I should have been used to this, but somehow the lack of other input devices made the iPad feel far more cut off than say a MacBook Pro.

None of this mattered to my children, who immediately fell in love with the iPad and enjoyed playing games and interacting with its large screen high quality display. As a parent, I was really impressed by the animated e-books such as Toy Story. These brought familiar content to life in creative and engaging ways, and showed what the future of children’s publishing could (and should) be about.

Ironically, although the book reader worked well – it felt a bit dull in comparison to the other applications. I did like some of the magazine and comic book apps, but whether these would get me to start buying magazines again as opposed to simply accessing content on the web remains to be seen.

• So, is it an overblown iPod Touch? Well, yes.
• Is it another industry game changer? I think so.
• Did it lead to near death battles for possession within my family that lasted all weekend? You’d better believe it.

The iPad is made for families. To compare an iPad to a Kindle or a Nook seems unfair – it simply blows them away. Whether it emerges as the industry leader in this new product category remains to be seen. But I’m pretty sure that Apple has once again created a new genre of devices that will in time transform the ways in which we engage with books, newspapers and magazines.

What does all this mean for my campaign to stop people switching to Apple products? I concede it’s a major blow. The fact that Microsoft has dropped its plans to launch a tablet PC is another set back. But, it’s not too late. Google is rumoured to be working on an iPad killer, in the same way they designed the Nexus One to take out the iPhone, but we all know how well that turned out…

Don’t cry for Gizmodo Editor Jason Chen – He had it coming

Last week the editor of Gizmodo, Jason Chen was boasting about scooping the biggest tech story of the year – getting hold of what is very likely to be the next generation iPhone.  Yesterday, California police raided Chen’s house, removing his computers and servers. Serves him right.

Why the hard line? Three reasons:

• Gizmodo felt no sense of regret about exposing the hapless Apple Software Engineer Gray Powell who left the prototype in the now infamous German beer garden in Redwood City. The Gizmodo piece not only revealed his name, but also included his photo and Facebook profile. Given that Gray had made the most serious error of his short professional career, did he really need to be exposed in this way?
• Gizmodo admitted paying $5,000 for the device. They claim that they didn’t know it was stolen, but is this a credible defence? They knew that if genuine, the device would not have been released with Apple’s blessing. Whether it was mislaid or stolen, Gizmodo choose to pay the person that took the phone, and keep their source anonymous, while at the same time exposing all the details they could find about the victim.
• The third and most serious reason is that their scoop has actually increased the hype around the new iPhone. Apple could not have paid for this level of PR coverage. Gizmodo admitted that their page views went through the roof, potentially earning them millions in ad revenue. Chen stated last week that his only regret was the fact that they didn’t milk the story longer.

All this means that more people are likely to buy the new iPhone when it arrives. The raid by the police provides some reassurance that Apple is still the secretive, paranoid, protectionist company that we know so well.

So don’t cry for Chen, he has showed no remorse, and perversely this latest twist in the tale is keeping the story alive, generating even more hype around the iPhone release.