On November 4, Elon Musk’s former partner Amber Heard bid adieu to Twitter. Following in Heard’s footsteps, supermodel Gigi Hadid announced her departure from the platform this week saying that the platform is no longer a ‘safe place’ for anyone. The following events hint that the celebs on Twitter are on the move to another platform. 

On the same day, Deadpool actor Ryan Reynolds also shared his Marvel character’s fanfiction on the retro-social platform, Tumblr. Following the initial post, the actor has updated numerous GIFs of himself that gained responses from fans who reblogged his posts. 

Was it Ryan’s hidden true Tumblrina—colloquially implying a Tumblr user—which fueled his move or was it the new $8 blue tick surcharge on Twitter? True Tumblrinas are already skeptical about the Twitter refugees shaping the essence of their culture, along with a fear of Tumblr turning into a shitty bird site. 

In addition to making us bawl over perfect fictitious characters, author John Green is also well known for his participation on Tumblr with grace and comedy. All the Swifties may also follow Taylor Swift’s dashboard (feed on Tumblr) by adding materials to their fanfiction. Amidst all this discussion and debate, Duolingo, the famous language learning app tweeted:

Source: Twitter

These discussions and moves from Twitter to Tumblr seems like the bird has rather fled away, but not freed! 

Rekindling the old love

Imagine this: It’s 2014, and GenZs are posting their favorite bands quoting poetry of their own on the blog-styled feed. One could find pictures ranging from aesthetic street style photography to early 2000’s indie fashion inspiration. Ah, the era of tumblr seemed irreplaceable—making it a true relic of the internet. 

Tumblr acts as a hybrid blogging application which enables users to publish short and long posts containing images, audio, text, or videos on their accounts. The posts are crafted in a perfectly balanced manner by not being as lengthy as traditional blog posts but also not as short as Twitter updates. 

The community of users can reblog content on their own Tumblelogs or even share to other platforms. Much like the twitter thread, followers on Tumblr can discuss the entries—or posts—via attached notes. 

The platform is flooded with extraordinary features, making it the winner in the virtual race. In 2015, Tumblr launched “GIF maker” for creating and sharing GIFs. “So many of the photos you create on your iPhone today are ready to be GIF’ed,” said Karp.

Users can create blogs about specific interests, such as movies, songs,  TV shows, fashion, art, travel, and much more. Such groups of niche communities based on shared interests was quite a style statement that boomed in the early 2010s.

Though the platform temporarily lost its charm to more glorified platforms such as Twitter and Instagram, the recent announcement and its aftermath shows that users are quickly rekindling their past love for Tumblr. One can only scroll on TikTok or Instagram quietly speculating the return of Tumblr’s popularity. 

While others experimented with Tumblr along with other new platforms, the former has always been the go-to platform for millennials and GenZs. 

According to CFO Jeff D’Onofrio, 48% of its active users and 61% of its new ones on the platform are owned by GenZs. 

How to join or rejoin Tumblr

On Monday, Tumblr posted on a twitter thread on how it’s time to join (or rejoin) their platform. 

One of the main features of the platform is that the feed is in a ‘reverse chronological’ order, which lets users see all posts if they scroll long enough. It also consists of a featured meme consisting of an image of an elevator and the words ‘eeby deeby’. Moreover, the platform is home to numerous GIFs, attracting a dedicated fanbase. If a user isn’t happy with the algorithmic recommendation system, they can just turn it off.  Unlike other social media platforms, Tumblr lets users add over 30 images to a single post. 

Also read, Top 3 Reasons To Ditch Twitter, And Join Tumblr

While Tumblr is inviting people to join the platform, Tumblrinas are poking fun at people who want to leave Twitter. 

Twitterati, please don’t crash our party

Source: Tumblr

As a welcome gesture for the new refugees, a Tumblrina commented, “Don’t worry, we don’t have Elon Musk here”. The users have said that the platform isn’t Twitter or their average every day site. They are crazy, weird, don’t fit in and they’re okay with it! Tumblr is primarily home to clusters of fangirls, the superwholocks, the fujoshis, and the steven universe critical bloggers. The users have forgotten whatever “normal” means.  

Source: Tumblr

Meanwhile, Tumblr’s journey has been a roller-coaster ride in itself. It has been acquired and sold multiple times previously. 

Tumblr switched many hands 

In 2013, Tumblr was sold to Yahoo for $1 billion, where users were concerned with the firm’s management to make the platform weirder. Yahoo then sold it off at a loss as a part of a larger acquisition deal with Verizon in 2017, as the platform failed to generate adequate advertising revenue. 

Later in 2019, Verizon reportedly sold Tumblr to the WordPress parent Automattic for a teensy $3 million. 

This chain of incidents is a reminder to Twitter of the phase that it is going through.  

Source: Twitter

That leaves us with only one question: Will Twitter suffer a similar fate?