After almost five years since its launch, Tumblr has more than 42 million individual blogs. When I checked a few minutes ago over 56 million posts have been published – today!

Microblogs and Tumblr might not be any news to you, but why do people like it so much? One of the popular features is the “reblog button.” On the microblog site a Tumblr user can “reblog” other users’ blog posts, which means that in a rapid pace content can go viral and users are always in the loop. A user can also follow other users to make sure she knows what’s happening – an important criterion for the largest user group, which is teenagers and young adults aged 18-24. And of course, the fact that users can customize their own pages doesn’t hurt Tumblr’s popularity either.

Among celebrities using Tumblr, e.g. John Legend and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, maybe President Obama is the most famous one. People are also becoming famous through Tumblr. Seventeen-year-old Taylor-Ruth Baldwin created Hanging Rock Comics with her own comics and illustrations. Taylor-Ruth has over 32,000 Tumblr followers and has been mentioned in various media.

Earlier today, TIME published 30 Must-See Tumblr Blogs that is definitely worth checking out. At the office we like Awesome People Hanging Out Together, which contains photos of celebrities doing just that – hanging out together.

Are you using Tumblr? What do you think about it? Is it only for a younger crowd or will it soon be a household name?

Anna

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The quite controversial Jack Werner was the first curator to tweet and the news made it to publications such as Time, Mashable, and all over the world.

Another interesting Twitter occasion was created by Swedish Stockholms Stadsmission, which built a paywall on Twitter. During one week (December 14-21) famous Swedes tweeted under the @betalvaggen handle and all the money raised went to help homeless people. With the words “People who are homeless can’t fill their stomachs with Facebook likes. Retweets will not keep them warm at night,” followers were encouraged to donate 25 SEK (about $3.50) each. Among the celebrities tweeting were well-known Swedish characters such as author Susanna Alakoski, TV-profiles Felix Herngren and Gry Forsell, and pop singer Niklas Stromstedt. Find more information here.

Both campaigns are proofs of how Twitter can be a tool for innovative marketing techniques. When it is for a social cause, such as @betalvaggen, it makes it so much better.

Anna

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