Get Comparisons Blog

In a recent TechCrunch post, Tumblr was reported to have 6.5B pageviews per month. It’s a service that makes blogging incredibly easy and is growing at an insane rate. So, what separates Tumblr from the masses (besides their awesome Tumblr gifs)? We think we can answer this question using the data we’ve pulled from GetComparisons – and it might surprise you.

Since launch we’ve received over 45 different reviews on blogging platforms and it has quickly become one of our most popular categories. These comparisons cover the top 8 blogging sites on the web including micro-blogging platforms and content management systems. Based on our users’ experiences with these  products, here are the top five criteria people look for in a blogging platform:

1. Design & Customization

This is the most important criteria for users when choosing a blogging platform. This includes ability to customize templates, plugins, themes, specific URL’s, etc.

Content management systems like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and Movable Type lead in this category, especially for professional users who prefer highly customizable blogs. Case in point: we’re currently hosting this blog using a custom WordPress theme and WordPress template.

2. Social Media Sharing

The ability to easily implement social media sharing capabilities into blogs is also high priority.  This specific criterion can be broken down into two parts:

1. Ability to automatically share new content when a post is written through social channels.

2. Giving readers the ability to easily share each post through their respective social media channels.

Tumblr and Posterous do a wonderful job of this by making both these requirements incredibly easy to activate without the use of plugins.

3. Community

Having an internal network of users to glean inspiration from and showoff your content to is key.

Tumblr has done a brilliant job of this. They have a highly active community that encourages user engagement through likes, reblogs, replies, etc. Their tag system is awesome because it gives users the opportunity to find content not otherwise available on their news feed and extends their influence and reach.

4. Ease of Use

One of the issues with blogging is that often times, the setup, maintenance and customization get in the way of actual blogging. When there’s no complicated WordPress plugin or messy code to deal with, micro-blogging platforms like Tumblr & Posterous thrive. Case in point: On Posterous, if you know how to email, you know how to blog.

5. Cost

Completely free or freemium – need we say more?

With these criteria in mind, lets take a look at Tumblr’s approach:

Tumblr’s a free service that’s incredibly easy to signup and get started on. Within minutes you can pick a clean and beautifully designed theme to use on your blog. You can easily upload your content, share it through Facebook & Twitter, and tag it so that someone else in Tumblr’s massive universe sees it and reblogs it. Within 15 minutes you’ve knocked off all five criteria. Therein lies Tumblr’s métier and the answer to our original question – What separates Tumblr from the masses?

It makes your thoughts look sexy and sharing them is easy as hell to do so.

Here’s a chart of  all the blogging platforms our users like ranked by attributes: