WordPress Sees Influx of Tumblr Blogs

By Paul Thomson :: 4:29 PM

With the Yahoo acquisition of blogging service Tumblr yesterday, competing blog host, WordPress.com reported an uptick in the number of blogs imported into its system.

Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress, posted on his blog yesterday that imports of Tumblr content into WordPress.com-managed blogs peaked at 72,000 posts per hour after the news of the acquisition was made public. Normally, Tumblr users import between 400 to 600 posts an hour into WordPress on any given Sunday.

Such a large influx of content from Tumblr is not surprising. Many users with blogs on Tumblr are unsure of what Yahoo will do with the service once it takes over, despite Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s assurances that things will stay the same, and that Yahoo “won’t screw it up” with the Tumblr purchase.

While Mayer may have promised not to screw anything up – she certainly didn’t promise to monetize the platform. During a call with Yahoo’s investors this morning, Mayer explained the mechanics of Tumblr and its dashboard feature. Tumblr currently features some ads on user dashboards, but Mayer told the board that Yahoo, “would like to look at them and understand how we could introduce ads, in a very light ad load, where the impact is really created, because the ads really fit the users’ expectations and follow the form and function of the dashboard.”

Yahoo’s head of finance, Ken Goldman, also mirrored Mayer’s outlook for Tumblr, saying that Yahoo hopes Tumblr will have an impact on overall revenue as soon as next year.

Times will likely change for Tumblr users soon, and change fast.