Could Tumblr Be the Next Facebook?

According to a recent survey in the United Kingdom , more people said they
would abandon a flush toilet before giving up Facebook. In fact, the social
network was ranked No. 3 in importance just behind sunshine and drinking water!
OK, surveys definitely can be suspect. But when looking at actual online
traffic, there is little doubt the Facebook is a global megaforce. Consider
this: Based on a study from Nielsen, Americans spent about 53 billion minutes on
Facebook in May. By far, it was the most visited site on the web. It's
something that should be extremely scary for other major Net operators like
Google (NASDAQ: GOOG ), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT ) and Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO ).
And is it any wonder that investors are eagerly awaiting for a Facebook IPO?
Yes, it should be huge. After all, Americans spend about 23% of their online
time on social networks and blogs. The second-most popular activity is gaming,
which comes to about 10% of time spent. Yet the Nielsen study also noted
something else that was interesting. A new company is climbing the social
networking charts: Tumblr, whose online growth over the past year has tripled.
Its current rank is No. 9. Keep in mind that in May, the site served 623 million
minutes, which actually beat Twitter (565 million minutes). LinkedIn (NYSE: LNKD
) had only 325 million minutes. Essentially, Tumblr morphs social networking and
blogs. For example, you can do things like post messages, share photos/links and
see videos. While this might seem like ordinary stuff, Tumblr's service is
attractive because its super-easy to use. Now, it probably still will take a few
years for the site to put pressure on Facebook if it ever does. But given the
ramp up in Tumblr's growth, it seems like we'll be hearing much more about
the company. Tom Taulli is the author of All About Short Selling and "All
About Commodities." You can also find him at Twitter account @ttaulli. He does
not own a position in any of the stocks named here.