• by Lee Vann , Columnist, September 8, 2011

Back in May, I took a look at how Hispanics were embracing emerging social media platforms and Tumblr caught my eye. When Tumblr announced last week that it now supports Spanish, I thought I would see how Tumblr had progressed in the past few months. What I found was impressive. Tumblr has grown exponentially among Hispanics and now represents a platform Hispanics online marketers should seriously consider.

A cross between a blogging platform and Twitter, Tumblr makes it easy to share content and interact with it. Today there are over 28 million Tumblr blogs. Through Tumblr's intuitive "liking" and "re-blogging" features, users share photos, videos or articles with their followers, who then amplify the content by re-blogging it to their networks.

Hispanic usage of Tumblr continues to skyrocket

Back in May 2011, comScore reported that 787,000 Hispanics visited Tumblr, making up 9% of total U.S. traffic. In July 2011, Hispanic visitors to Tumblr skyrocketed to 1.5 million or 11% of U.S. traffic. In the past 12 months, Tumblr's total U.S. traffic grew 218% while Tumblr's U.S. Hispanic traffic grew 312%. To put things in perspective, take a look at how Tumblr stacks up from a Hispanic traffic perspective to some leading Spanish language sites.

1. Univision.com - 3.5 Million Hispanic visitors
2. Tumblr - 1.5 Million Hispanic visitors
3. MSN Latino - 1.5 Million Hispanic visitors
4. Terra.com - 740 Thousand Hispanic visitors
5. AOL Latino - 650 Thousand Hispanic visitors

When taking a closer look at Tumblr's 1.5 million monthly Hispanic visitors we find that they are more likely to be female, have children, prefer English and be younger than the aggregate Hispanic online market. Here is a quick comparison of Tumblr's Hispanic users compared to Hispanic online market in general.

• Age 12-34

Hispanic online market 47%
Tumblr 77%

• Female

Hispanic online market 49%
Tumblr 52%

• Have Children

Hispanic online market 63%
Tumblr 70%

• Prefer English

Hispanic online market 54%
Tumblr 59%

The opportunity is wide open

Despite these impressive statistics, I am not aware of any large brands or organizations (besides Univision News) that have leveraged Tumblr to reach Hispanics. I will be keeping my eye on Tumblr to see who takes advantage of this opportunity.