The micro-blogging platform Tumblr is currently enjoying prodigious growth, drawing a quarter of a billion impressions – or page views – every week, according to its founder Dave Karp.

Mr Karp – who founded Tumblr in 2007 – said in an interview with Tech Crunch TV that the website’s third year saw a marked increase in visitors compared to the previous two years, courtesy of Tumblr making an impact in the American mainstream. Karp associated the drive in popularity with a wealth of younger users joining the site as they returned to school and college, along with a significant increase of hits in Europe, Japan and Brazil over the last 6 to 12 months.

Established as one of the first micro-blogging mediums, Tumblr suffered from the arrival and subsequent dominance of Twitter a few years ago, but Tumblr’s unique service – one lets users creatively share images, video and links – is definitely in vogue.

Tumblr has been cited as a valuable marketing tool by the media and social web guide Smedio. The platform can be used in conjunction with other social media sites to increase a company’s online presence, while helping to give unique material high exposure in the blogosphere.

Launched in 2007, Tumblr has until now been one the many social media programmes which has attracted a cult following, but never reached the mainstream heights of Twitter, Facebook et al. However, industry insiders now believe that this multi-media platform may be about to reach a tipping point of popularity, with 15,000 new users every day and, like Twitter before it, will soon explode into the next big thing.

But what is it?

Tumblr is essentially a blogging platform that allows users to post text, images, audio, links, videos, and quotes to a short form blog, known as a Tumblelog. As on Twitter, these Tumblelogs attract followers who can subscribe to your feed and there are options to both like and re-blog information, ensuring that strong postings with informative or useful content are disseminated amongst the community.

Tumblr’s creator David Karp designed the forum with ease of use and access in mind and it has also been made the subject of an app, allowing it to be accessed and used from anywhere. Therefore it is a highly popular forum for those wishing to post various types of files quickly and easily.

If Tumblr does take off as predicted, there is a strong advantage to be had in beginning to develop a Tumblelog now. The forum is especially suited to companies wishing to run a multi-format social media campaign quickly and easily. The programme combines the ease and speed of Twitter with the multi-media aspects of Facebook to create a powerful social media tool that could begin to eclipse many others in the coming months.