Bloggers’ separation anxiety over Tumblr downtime

6 Dec 2010

Fast-rising blogging site Tumblr has been offline for more than 12 hours and judging by the anxious tweets on Twitter, its early adopters are not impressed and are suffering withdrawal symptoms.

For some reason, Tumblr went offline 12 hours ago and left this message: “We’ll be back shortly.”

Tumblr is a microblogging platform that is generating a dedicated following by making it easy to post text, images, quotes and videos to its short-form blog. Founded in 2007, it has in excess of 3 million users and the site is averaging 2 million posts a day and growing at the rate of 15,000 new users daily.

Well, “shortly” in Tumblr time could risk the loss of avid followers. “Tumblr, stop being a douche,” wrote one so not impressed user.

“Shortly is the new half day,” grimaced another on Twitter.

“Tumblr, I miss you,” said one very exasperated user.

“I am seriously thinking of moving elsewhere,” fumed another.

The technical difficulties couldn’t have come at a more inopportune time for the blogging service. The company is in the process of raising between US$120m and US$150m dollars in venture capital.

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com