Tumblr is where the Internet's cool kids hang out. That's
why Yahoo paid $1.1 billion to buy the blogging site in one of this
year's most buzzed-about deals.
Now, Tumblr is
flaunting its hipster credentials with a first-ever breakdown of the
year's hottest trends, topics and celebrities.
The
retrospective starts Tuesday at http://YearinReview.tumblr.com with an
exploration of 20 categories ranging from the most popular musical
groups to the most interesting architecture of 2013. Boasting a plethora
of images, the review will continue through December with daily posts
that will culminate on New Year's Eve with the best fireworks displays
featured on Tumblr during the year.
Similar
end-of-the-year lists are annual rites at Yahoo, Google and other
websites equipped with search engines that sort through billions of
requests for information to determine which topics piqued people's
interests.
Tumblr's musings figure to stand
out because they are drawn from a younger audience that differs from the
more conventional crowds that flock to general-purpose search engines.
More
than half of Tumblr's 170 million users are under 35 years old, a
demographic that has helped turn the service into a free-wheeling forum
filled with provocative imagery, snarky humor and occasionally ribald
commentary.
"The people on Tumblr never cease
to amaze me with their creativity and their wit and the amount of fun
they are having online," said Danielle Strle, Tumblr's director of
product for content and community. "There are certain things they are
crazy about that I am sure that a more general Internet audience is not
super nuts about."
Tumblr's eclectic tastes
are evident in some of the categories featured in the service's year-end
roundup. Entire sections will be devoted to photo bombing, fingernail
art, unicorns, bacon, pretty colors, student loans and the lesbian, gay,
bisexual and transgender communities.
In
contrast, the annual lists released by the mainstream search engines
tend to be more prosaic and predictable recitations that pore through
the most popular celebrities, movies, singers, TV shows, and news
stories.
Microsoft Corp.'s Bing search engine
also reviewed the most popular social media services in its year-end
list released Monday. (Tumblr ranked sixth behind Facebook, Pinterest,
Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.)
Tumblr's
look back delves into some of that well-worn territory, too, though its
selections may send some people scurrying to a search engine to find out
more. For instance, the most blogged-about actor on Tumblr during this
year was Benedict Cumberbatch, an English performer who has primarily
had supporting roles in U.S. films (he most recently played the villain
Khan in "Star Trek Into Darkness.")
Cumberbatch
doesn't appear in a separate year-end roundup to be released Tuesday by
Yahoo, but "Star Trek Into Darkness" tops Yahoo's rankings of the
most-searched movies on its site.
Other Tumblr
items unlikely to show up in other year-end roundups include shots of
brides throwing cats into the air instead of wedding bouquets and school
notices explaining the reasons for students' detention.
In a tip to Tumblr, Yahoo is highlighting three of the blogging site's categories in its own breakdown.
Now
Yahoo Inc. wants 6-year-old Tumblr to start selling more ads. One of
the categories in Tumblr's retrospective highlights the best ads that
appeared on the service this year.
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