Tumblr is aiming to follow in the footsteps of Facebook, YouTube and Twitter with an attempt to attract UK brands, and make more money from the site. The five-year-old blogging platform, has signed up We Are Social, Poke, AKQA and Bartle Bogle Hegarty as its first UK agency partners.

The partnership will give them access to Tumblr data and specialist training in a similar manner to Facebook’s Preferred Developer programme. It has signed up 12 agencies globally.

The expansion of Tumblr in the UK comes after a successful US election campaign where the platform was heavily used by the Obama campaign and where its own bloggers covered the election. Tumblr also saw an explosion of animated GIFs as they moved into the mainstream. Read More »

Readwrite reports on another potentially damaging problem for Facebook concerning the billionaire investor Mark Cuban airing his dissatisfaction with the social network. It has echoes of the General Motors story earlier this year.  I’m sure you’ll remember when GM announced it was to cease advertising on the site, and concentrate on content, in a blow to Facebook as it headed for its IPO.

This time it is tech and media billionaire Mark Cuban, who also owns the NBA basketball team the Dallas Mavericks, who says that he is tiring of the way that Facebook does business and is considering taking his considerable business elsewhere.

His issues relate to changes that Facebook has made to its algorithm, known as Facebook Edgerank, that means that many brands have experienced a considerable drop off in the reach of their posts. Read More »

As the US election race winds down through its final hours Twitter has launched its election Twitter #Election2012 event page, which will curate Tweets from the candidates, their campaign staff, political insiders, news commentators, and government officials as the day plays out.

The 2012 US election has been dubbed the Twitter election from the start with CEO Dick Costolo making the claim back in January.

In 2004 it was blogs, in 2008 it was Facebook and 2012 has been about Twitter.  There is little doubt about that. Other platforms have made their presence felt like Tumblr and Instagram, but Twitter has made the headlines. Read More »

Tumblr has had a very good US election so far. The Obama campaign particularly has taken to it and scored big hits with animated GIFs. Not so much for Mitt Romney’s team, but both have paid a good deal of attention to it.

We also saw Tumblr working with various media brands like how it teamed up with The Guardian for the Presidential debates.

We also saw how one Tumblr post became the most popular of all time with a whopping eight million shares. Read More »

The final debate might have been close with most seeming  to give it to Barack Obama and only some to Mitt Romney, but what is certainly true is that the President had the biggest moments of the night on Twitter.

The Obama campaign has taken advantage of that by proving, as it has done throughout the campaign, to be quick off the mark and snapping up key search terms. This time it has bought the word “bayonets”, which unlikely as it sounds of being the word of the night in the final debate.

The third and final debate, where Obama played the foreign policy experience card and Romney played it safe, was also the quietest in terms of social media. While the first Presidential debate broke record as most Tweeted about political event the third and final debate was a long way off of that high.

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Advertising Week and CNBC recently held an event with the titans of the social web. Called Masters of Monetization 2.0, the event brought together top revenue and ad execs from LinkdedIn, Twitter, Foursquare, Buzzfeed and Tumblr, as well as some Madison Avenue mad men.

Together, they came up with some insights into how to bring in revenue from the social web, an issue which has long plagued even the hottest tech companies.

There was also a growing focus on mobile, with significant amounts of social network traffic coming via smartphones and tablets.
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As the first presidential debate of the US election kicks off tonight between President Obama and Mitt Romney Tumblr is teaming up with the Guardian.

On its ‘Tumbling The Election blog‘, Tumblr and its team of GIF artists are planning to crank out instant animations of the best debate moments.

Tumblr says these will be from “zingers to gaffes to awkward silences” in a debate that will see the men come head to head for the first time. Read More »

An incredible piece of social media discovery was unravelled yesterday that tracked down the most popular Tumblr’s post of all time, which has racked up an incredible almost eight million social shares.

That is just one post that has been liked or reblogged eight million times. You are I’m sure thinking it must be something incredibly fascinating to have such pull. You would be wrong.

The comment is a childish headline that went viral that simply says: “Mitt Romney sucks pass it on”. For a network dominated by young bloggers in an election year that has added significance. Read More »

The fashion industry and its fans have embraced visual social media sites like Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram, and blogging platform Tumblr.

It’s natural that social mediums that focus on (or include) images will attract designers, fans and brands.

But a real community takes time and skill to develop, and requires nurturing if it is to succeed, particularly in fashion. Fashion is such a personal, subjective thing that it can attract disproportionate levels of passion from fans, which can be wonderful if the passion is positive and the brand knows how to channel it.  Read More »

Great round up here from Ignite Social Media taking a global look at social networking and charting the winners and losers in 2012..

While Facebook continues to dominate in much of the world that is not the whole story. Looking east for instance to the Ukraine and Russia there has been the rise of  Vkontakte and in China and Hong Kong we see Kaixin001 appealing to many men.

As newer networks like Pinterest have popped up we have something new again: social networks dominated by women. The infographic lists all of the social networks where women are dominate as well as those where men are the majority. Read More »