Where Yahoo's Tumblr Ranks Next to Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest

Where Yahoo’s Tumblr Ranks Next to Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest

It may be close to Twitter in users, but somehow Tumblr doesn’t feel like it has nearly the same viral influence.

Maybe it’s the constraint of Twitter’s truly mobile-first philosophy that gives it such unique contagiousness. This constraint brings a focus Tumblr can’t, and probably shouldn’t, compete with, being a double-edged sword Twitter still struggles against.

With both Facebook and Twitter, the mobile experience is equal to that of the desktop, in my usage. While with Tumblr, as excellent as the mobile apps are for reading, and for quick reblogs, I still need the full website for many of my posts. (That being said I am writing this from my phone.)

Your mileage may vary of course — I use photosets made from found images a lot, which currently isn’t really a use case the mobile apps are suited for, and moreover isn’t the most mainstream activity.

How well Yahoo and Tumblr manage to evolve the product’s use of and design around mobile use cases, and increase its presence in the average person’s daily, casual, real-time media reading and sharing flow, will be a big part of how successful the product and this acquisition will be judged going forward.