Riding on the buzz behind its stellar tumblelogging network Tumblr and its web-based file distribution utility Senduit, the New York based web design company Davidville, Inc. is positioned to make an audible splash. Its solutions are designed with accessibility in mind, making them appealing to even the most basic of users.
Tumblr is a re-envisioning of tumblelogging, a subset of blogging that uses quick, mixed-media posts. The service hopes to do for the tumblelog what services like LiveJournal and Blogger did for the blog. The difference is that its extreme simplicity will make luring users a far easier task than acquiring users for traditional weblogging. Anytime a user sees something interesting online, they can click a quick “Share on Tumblr” bookmarklet that then tumbles the snippet directly. The result is varied string of media ranging links and text to pictures and videos that takes very little time and effort to maintain.
Having just celebrated its one month anniversary (it launched on March 1), Tumblr is already used by a growing legion of over 50,000 users — and the numbers get more interesting from there. For every five users on Tumblr there is one post per hour. Although a Tumblr is conducive to mixed-media posts the creators were initially fearful that Tumblr would be heavily weighted toward only one or two of the available mediums. What they’re finding, however, is a healthy spread of all of the flavors currently available to tumblrs, with photos currently owning 34-percent of the posts and other formats tagging along in close succession.
Tumblr utilizes intuitive proprietary web publishing software that offers unparalleled simplicity. In fact, in all of my years online, I’ve never encountered a more transparent publishing utility. There is absolutely no learning curve, just sign-up and start posting. I’ve been running one at Wasteoid.net for about a week now and I’ve tumbled a considerable collection of entries due entirely to its instant gratification posting dynamic.
Because of its simplicity, Tumblr finds itself in a doubly strong position. It is poised to gain the attention of the less web savvy masses who have been wondering for some time “what that blogging stuff is all about.” There is no small value in clinching that demographic — the success of MySpace is a resounding testament to that.
Perhaps more interestingly though, is its ability to fill the wide gap between social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace and community sites like Flickr, Delicious, etc. Beyond simply posting directly to Tumblr, users can have Tumblr aggregate feeds from many of the other sites on which they propagate. On Wasteoid, for instance, I’ve set my Tumblr to draw my RSS output from Twitter, Digg, Pipes and other sites. The result is something akin to my digital stream of consciousness, consisting of a homogeneous flow of status updates, links of interest, pictures, text, quotes, conversations and practically anything else that crosses my path during the day.
And there is still a lot more in the works for Tumblr. In April, it will roll out a collection of Tumblr features designed to fuel its expanding community, including additions to connect tumblrs around content and friends, and transparently interact with users outside the Tumblr network. Continuing down the calendar, their goal for May is to begin offering premium account subscriptions for a nominal fee. While Davidville founder Dave Karp assures me that, “[They're] committed to continuing to offer free accounts that are more robust and powerful than any of the other web publishing services,” premium accounts will fulfill a fundamental place for the fledgling network.
In addition to receiving a suite of premium services, pro tumblrs will serve as the primary testbed beta testers for new Tumblr features. This is a keen route as it adds incentive for users to purchase premium accounts and because it provides Tumblr with an expansive testbed of users that not only are familiar with the service, but also have a personal interest in its outcome. Furthermore, there is the boon of adding money to the company coffers for continued expansion — but Karp and crew aren’t banking on just one invention
Back in Feb. they launched Senduit, a web-based utility designed to assist in the sharing of large files over the Internet. Since its launch two months ago, site usage has expanded to 250,000 unique monthly visitors. Over 65,000 files are uploaded each month and downloads are in the ballpark of 500,000. The service manages its bandwidth usage through smart throttling measures used to ensure that its not abused or used for spam and warez.
All of that said, Davidville, Inc. is a company to pay attention to in the coming months. It has in Tumblr a product that any company would froth wildly at the mouth for, a trendy service that is capable of vast mainstream appeal across the demographic lines. Its products have entered my current stable of web tools and aren’t likely to leave anytime soon.
Had no idea that was so recent, I looked at some of the logs on there and it seems pretty cool. Now if someone can get in a position between this kind of logging and Twitter, and between this and full blogs, we’ll have the whole entire possible spectrum covered.
Anyway Davidville is doing impressive work.
sounds like pure ad copy.
I started using it last week and love it! Only issue is I wish you could leave comments.
Blake you might be interested in my video post from last week where I call tumblr a “better twitter”… click my name if you are interested in it.
Even easier than typing a post is importing it from an RSS feed and/or web service from any of a number of OTHER social networks you’re on …
http://neurokinetikz.com
#2
I agree - not the usual TC critique.
-Zaid
I thought nothing could be less interesting then twitter, but here it is!
my blog is a tumblr based. In addition some people just want easy reading -ooO see you in the lounge.
Please don’t use images from photobucket on your website. Some of us are unfortunate enough to browse behind irritating proxies and they like to block all of photobucket for some reason.
That growth is impressive. You just can’t please everyone - this is too simple and other things are too complex! Well, if they can come close to sustaining these kinds of numbers for awhile then users will have spoken for themselves.
I moved the images to the TC server.
After reading the last paragraph, it’s almost as if they had blake throw in “we’re looking to get acquired!”.
Not sure where you got 1997 from, either. The domain name davidville.com was purchased in 2001, and according to archive.org only served as a personal site for david until 2005.
Also, they weren’t “Davidville, Inc” until November of 2005, as shown here.
I smell pump and dump…
- Sounds like a great idea - simple was web1.0 is web2.0 and will be 3.0 …
- No body will ever want to sit in front of a site and try to figure it out …
#12: Hi Jimmy. We began operating as freelance contractors in ‘97 and operated under the DBA “Davidville” since, I believe, 2001. We incorporated in 2005. I do agree though that the language is misleading and otherwise unnecessary. We’ll take it down.
Too Simple for my liking….
Pretty impressive response, David… much respect, and good luck in your endeavors. (I do admire your work, btw… good stuff)
Been tumblelogging for a while after I heard about it on TWiT. It had a “I get it” feel to it, and given a choice between Tumblr and Twitter, I’d take the former any day.
http://transferbigfiles.com has been around a while longer than senduit…same service for free with a lot more options.
Building a brand with multiple useful products is a more efficient way to experience larger revenues and exposure, a la 37 Signals and Six Apart.
I have a lot more faith that a company with multiple strings of revenue and attention is going to remain viable compared to a company that develops one product and calls that product a business.
Who cares if the things Davidville does have been done before? Execution (which includes marketing) is significantly more important then being “the first kid on the block with a red bicycle.”
Dear Internet Startups,
Please quit using names that follow the below name schemes:
iWhatever - (iPhoto, iPod, iTools, iGive, iWon)
eWhatever - (eHarmony, ETrade, eSchool, eGreetings)
and my current pet peeve
Whatevr (no “e”) - (Flickr, Zooomr, Grabbr, Feedblndr).
Thanks.
Thanks for your insightful addition to the world Ramone (you left off your own e)
It’s a pretty amazing microblog format, particularly as an aggregator. I was using profilactic (still wins for best name) but I switched fully to using Tumblr for my feed aggregation.
http://engtech.tumblr.com/
http://www.profilactic.com/mashup/engtech
this post reads like a press release for the ‘company’.
Dear #20@Ramon
That’s nice, but do you know a good way to come up with names for domains that aren’t taken already?
Until then we Web2.0 folks will use Whatevr iName that isn’t eTaken yet.
Comment1) When I started reading the article I actually thought TC was quoting from a press release. By comparison it’s pretty rare for someone like Walt Mossberg to use those kind of superlatives.
Comment2) Is the barrier to entry for competitors as low as it seems? I’m not even close to a blogging expert, but it’s not obvious what they have that would take 2 good coders longer than a month to copy.
Not to say I don’t respect good design, simplicity, and the magic that is the ability to build momentum with a good service, these often can’t be achieved in any amount of time.
I don’t see Tumblr and Twitter being competition, I think they work together well. I have my Twitter posts pulled into my Tumblr feed along with my del.icio.us feed, flickr feed, and other things…
Tech,
Biggest barrier to entry for anyone cloning a TC-featured site is getting featured on TechCrunch:)
-Zaid
Tumblr runs a great service. Simplicity is a good thing for the rest of the world and Tumblr’s ease-of-use is a big advantage. The admin interface is also simple and intuitive, yet contains a growing number of features and tools. This post did seema bit gushing, but Tumblr is, IMHO, worth a rare gush or two. If you haven’t used this service, then check it out. You’ll be adding links and content in no time.
@26 - I’m importing similar feeds to my site, Jeremy. I love this particular feature!
I guess the number of folks out there without a life keeps growing to support these types of tools! Amazing!
Isn’t senduit a blatant copy of yousendit a similar service that has been around for at least a couple of years. BTW what happened to yousendit? Looks like they’re down.
Talking about YouSendIt and Senduit, you should also take a look at Quickeo, which is another option for people to share content, but much more pleasant. We are not talking about sharing just urls, we are assembling a page from this multimedia content (a Quickeomail) that is easy to create and much more pleasant to receive. Check out http://www.quickeo.com, I am interested in feedback if you give it a try
This is very nice but without comment functionality it will not be as popular as it could be. Also I want to have access to dashboard without going thru favorites. But I like the ease of use and directness of it.
http://de5ign.tumblr.com/
Pure hype! This place is turning into SpamCrunch
David Karp is the real deal, a developer, inventor, an imagine-er. He started as our intern as a young high school freshman and went on to “imagine and design” our very early community blog and our very early video podcasts, all the while developing his own projects (and other successful clients too, like urbanbaby.com).
great idea - simple was web1.0 is web2.0 and will be 3.0 …
- No body will ever want to sit in front of a site and try to figure it out …
Started using it last week and love it! Only issue is I wish you could leave comments.
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