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13 Feb 2012 21:17

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Tech: To give you an idea of Tumblr’s massive scale, some quick numbers:

  • 500 million page views go through Tumblr every single day
  • 40k requests added each second at Tumblr’s peak usage hours; and it’s growing, too
  • 50GB of posts added each day; follower list updates are roughly another 2.7 terabytes daily
  • 1M number of writes made through the dashboard each second, and 50,000 reads per second source
  • » It’s tough to scale, too: According to Blake Matheny, Tumblr’s Distributed Systems Engineer, the service’s broad distribution makes it different from many other social networks, adding complexity that can stress the servers greatly. “It’s not just one or two users that have millions of followers. The graph for Tumblr users has hundreds of followers,” he writes. “This is different than any other social network and is what makes Tumblr so challenging to scale.” Matheny says that people will go back hundreds of pages on the dashboard to read content. And the network will only grow in complexity over time — the site is growing by 30 percent each month, and requires hundreds of servers to do what it has to do. If you’re technically-inclined, read High Scalability’s entire article — it’s super-fascinating.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

30 Dec 2011 00:36

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Culture: Ben Breedlove’s death touches many — including his favorite rapper.

  • A tough teen with a gripping story: Ben Breedlove, a high schooler with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (and a YouTube personality known for offering dating advice to others), passed away from a heart attack on Christmas Day. It was only afterward that his parents discovered these two videos from Ben in which he told stories of coping with his disease, including three near-death experiences. In his third one, above, he describes an experience, while being revived by EMS paramedics, where he was with his favorite rapper, Kid Cudi. After watching Ben’s videos and hearing about his death, the artist wrote a message about Ben on his blog. Ben’s mother said that the videos were a “gift to us, and for him to be so confident and unafraid of death and to share it with other people was so touching.” source
Posted by samimain • 0 Comments • Permalink

26 Sep 2011 11:31

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Tech: Tumblr scores another massive funding round, making them super-rich

  • $85 million amount raised by Tumblr in a funding round just today
  • $30 million amount raised by Tumblr in a prior funding round earlier this year source
  • » Total funding? $125 million: With a growing, increasingly diverse audience, Tumblr’s latest funding round could help the brand blow up to new heights and in new directions. It’s happened pretty fast, too. Well, at least that’s what founder David Karp thinks: “Tumblr has come far since we began our journey. From the early users signing up to easily share all of the things they cared about, to the global community today where creators have an incredible opportunity to reach an audience of hundreds of millions, it’s been a remarkable four years.” Suggestion to David and Tumblr: Don’t get all Scrooge McDuck on us and start swimming through the funding round. NYC doesn’t have enough space for a giant money bin anyway. Instead, focus on uptime, possibly buying Missing e from Jeremy Cutler, and giving content creators a way to turn their hard work into more than just a hobby.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

27 Apr 2011 20:47

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Tech: Zephoria: A SEO company piggybacking off a researcher’s success?

  • It also looks like [Zephoria] is calling up other social media services to try to take over my account. I’m still investigating all of this but not at all surprised. Apparently, they’re a SEO company. And apparently my social media usage affects their SEO. Le sigh.
  • Danah Boyd • Getting at the key problem here with her whole Tumblr username takeover. While there’s reason for Tumblr to get a little bit of the stinkeye over this issue (although they’re working like crazy to make amends in this case, with Tumblr CEO David Karp himself doing customer service), Zephoria the company appears to be doing really sketchy things in an attempt to usurp Boyd’s longstanding online identity. Because, you know, Boyd has a Twitter account with many users, a YouTube account since 2006, a Flickr account since 2004, a Last.fm account since 2004 … you get the idea. So, instead of  going after Tumblr, we think the Zephoria company itself deserves scrutiny, based on their apparent piggyback on Boyd’s name. While they may have an A+ Better Business Bureau rating, if Boyd’s right, that should probably go down to a B-minus. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

15 Feb 2011 11:08

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Tech: Facebook’s protest game plan: Don’t favor anyone, ban fake accounts

  • Don’t ask Facebook to take sides in the Middle East. The massive social network may have played a key role in the recent protests in Egypt and in other countries, but they’re downright ambivalent about the trend – a major difference from Twitter, which has associated itself with being a communication tool for political movements, and Tumblr, which has a news tag devoted to Egypt. Facebook, meanwhile, has been banning pseudonym-based accounts created specifically to hide people’s names from the government, based on fraud concerns – including Wael Ghonim’s account. This has led to criticism, including a letter to Mark Zuckerberg from Sen. Richard J. Durbin. Look, Facebook, making it easier to facilitate protest isn’t the same thing as supporting protests. What, is the free spread of communication outside of your game plan? source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

06 Dec 2010 09:33

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Tech: Tumblr’s epic fail: Database failure has them down for the count

  • 15 hours with no Tumblr; good thing we still have WordPress source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

03 Oct 2010 15:36

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About: Our latest project (in beta): ShortFormBlog comes to Tumblr

  • Our latest big project? We’ve been working on a presence on Tumblr, for a few reasons. First, we think that what we do is a good fit with what Tumblr does. Second, Tumblr has a growing presence as a platform, and we think their community is pretty cool. Third, we also think that the current site might benefit from a reconsideration of its approach. Finally, we think that it’s not important that you come here to read us, but that you see what we read. If you prefer reading here, it’ll still be here. If you want a “lite” version with fewer bells and whistles, that’s over there. So that’s where we are here. We think it’s pretty cool. We hope you agree. And if you see any bugs, of which there are some, please let us know. (Oh yeah, follow us!) source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

23 Sep 2010 21:31

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Tech: Guy behind Instapaper ditches Tumblr to focus on his OTHER hit service

One of the guys who made Tumblr also made Instapaper, which we use to pre-curate our articles. Once a side project, now it’s a full-time gig that’s already profitable. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

17 Sep 2010 11:23

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Tech: Comparison: Posterous is big. Tumblr is a phenomenon.

  • Posterous is growing, yeah, but Tumblr is basically going to be the next Twitter. Eight million unique visitors per month versus less than two million? It’s not really a contest. (Though in Posterous’ defense, though, other companies such as Reddit have complained that these stats  aren’t always accurate – we know, for example, that our stats are totally off and our numbers in July, for example, are nearly triple what Compete says they are.) source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

13 Aug 2010 16:29

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Culture: We support this: Raise two middle fingers to cancer

  • Over the last few days, we’ve been reading a bunch about Chris Courtney’s battle with cancer, and it’s a pretty tough read, but they don’t make people braver than Courtney. (He’s a fun guy in person, to boot.) Courtney, who was design director of the Chicago Tribune’s RedEye for a number of years before switching his focus to mobile app design, was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, which has a high survival rate, but definitely isn’t a walk in the park. So, his friends made this site. And you know what? This is the new Livestrong. Kick cancer’s ass, Chris. We got your back. *middle fingers raised* source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
 
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