Blogging startup Tumblr stumbles, deletes thousands of accounts
Tumblr.com, a site that until recently promised easy-to-setup blogging for the less-technically inclined, has apparently not only deleted tens of thousands of its member’s blogs, but also imparted on a mass IP address ban on its users that is causing all web 2.0 site owners to merely ask - huh?
It all started in early August with the launch of a new Internet marketing “class” called The Thirty Day Challenge. During the Challenge, the creators taught users how to harness web 2.0 tools to get almost instantaneous keyword ranking results in Google. Using tumblr and other web 2.0 sites, it was possible to launch a blog and have it ranking on Google within a matter of hours.
Now imagine if you will, you were an Internet start-up, and suddenly you had tens of thousands of new blogs setup on your site that were NOT automated. Then imagine the very techniques that people signing up and using were bringing you tons and tons of traffic. What would you do? I know what I would do - I would quickly increase capacity to my servers, add advertising banners to people’s blogs (or something…) and embrace the now popular blogging service you have spent so much time and money building.
But I guess Marco at Tumblr did not see past his increased bandwidth charges to the benefits to his fledgling company. Sure, there were some sites that were created with “spammy” content, but there were actually some good blogs that were started with fairly good content, and the entire Thirty Day Challenge spoke about posting good content, so I would like to believe that the majority of the blogs that were created by members of “The Challenge” (Ok, let’s call this 30DC from now on) were honest blogs created to try their hand at Internet marketing.
Tumblr insists this is against its rules. Fair enough. But do they realize, no do they REALLY realize, that by deleting 20,000+ accounts, they could have deleted some that were truly valuable? It was easy for tumblr to go through and search for people doing the 30DC, since there are tools such as the link tracker that was provided… just do a LIKE or GREP for that domain name and boom, suspend all users.
And IP banning? This was definitely a knee-jerk reaction. Suspending accounts is one thing, IP banning is another. Tumblr has said that suspended accounts were sent an email, but I never received any such emails for the 2 sites that I tried out (successfully I might add)… so where are my suspended emails?
Probably where Tumblr’s head is at… up their proverbial… yeah.
Tumblr - you blew it. You were known as an easy to use service that anybody can use. Now you are known as a service nobody will use. Might as well pack up your office now.
Technorati Tags: tumblr, 30 Day Challenge, blogging, web 2.0
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[...] the premise of the idea, and some of the highlights (and lowlights) of last year, including the massive deletion of Tumblr accounts for what I still consider no good [...]