• December 12, 2008

Tumblr, a social online publishing platform, has closed a Series B round of financing to the tune of $4.5 million led by Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital.

In conjunction with the financing, the company has added John Maloney as president. With 20 years of experience, Maloney most recently served in senior-level positions at CNet Networks and UrbanBaby.com.

Tumblr's plans for early next year include the launch of a premium service that represents the company's first revenue generation. It will be followed by a revenue strategy, which will attempt to leverage its publishing platform and community.

John Borthwick, former SVP of technology at Time Warner, and current CEO of Betaworks, will join Tumblr's board of directors.

Founded in 2007, Tumblr Web traffic has grown six times in the past year and now reaches over 15 million monthly uniques through more than 500,000 publishers.

Union Square and Spark also led Tumblr's Series A round of $775,000 financing that was joined by Betaworks and individual investors including Vimeo Founder Jakob Lodwick; Albert Wenger, Former President of Delicious; and Martin Varsavsky, BioTech entrepreneur.--Gavin O'Malley