Is Pinterest the new Tumblr? Kind of like Facebook became the new Myspace?

While Pinterest is still relatively new to a scene that Tumblr has been ruling for years now, it seems like the two social sharing communities actually have more in common than might meet the eye.

For instance, Tumblr, while it does have sites who publish original content, mostly consists of its users “reblogging” content from one another, curating their own space within the larger community. The same could be said of Pinterest, some may upload their own photos, but many “pin” photos uploaded by others to their personalized space.

So while Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ (among others) may also be vying for the same numbers within the internets, it could be true that Pinterest and Tumblr may actually competing for the same types of users (or at least users that like tapping into similar aspects of social sharing — mostly visual, rather than verbal, like Twitter).

A couple months back, Pingdom stacked up the stats of the two sites and found that while Tumblr was still winning in some aspects, Pinterest was quickly catching up. IFB decided to update the original numbers to see how much more leverage Pinterest has gained on Tumblr — or if it has surpassed Tumblr. (Hint: It did.)

See the updated stats below:

Alexa

• Pinterest currently ranked in at number 15 in the United States, moving up a slot
• Tumblr, on the other hand, ranked at number 21, falling four slots since 3 months ago when the original article was written

Winner: Pinterest

Google Trends for Websites

The last analysis ended in April, but we updated it to include the month of June:

Winner: Pinterest

Compete

• Pinterest got a whopping 23,525,135 unique views for the month of August, and they increased 1,795.21% since last year
• Tumblr got 22,535,163 unique views in August, up only 49.54% from last year.

It should also be noted that in late June, Compete wrote, “New research from Compete’s Online Shopper Intelligence Survey suggests that Pinterest is succeeding in disrupting the social media landscape. About 1 in 4 consumers reports that they are spending less time on other social media sites in favor of Pinterest. Compete has observed some evidence of this change in behavior – there has been 3% decline in time spent on Facebook over the last month.

Pinterest is also attracting consumers who have not previously interacted with a social media. 15% of Pinterest users reported that they do not use any other social media sites. That number climbed to 23% amongst consumers with income less than 30K.”

Winner: Pinterest

Quantcast

• Pinterest received 53,748,272 visitors in the month of July
• And Tumblr received 40,586,152 visitors in the month of July

However, if you look at Tumblr’s explored and searched terms globally, it beats out Pinterest:

Then, if you look at the comparison in the United States alone, you can see Pinterest wins again.

So far, in terms of social media growth, the United States has been a solid gauge at predicting the future of how social media platforms will take to a global audience — so while Pinterest may be behind globally for now, it may not be for long.

In a nutshell, Pinterest currently seems to be on a trajectory to far surpass Tumblr’s reach.

So, how does this affect you as a blogger? Tumblr’s Advertising Push

Last month, Tumblr poached top Groupon sales exec Lee Brown in an effort to finally make the big bucks from it’s extensive community of bloggers (most of which are using it’s platform at no cost), according to All Things D, despite David Karp’s initial statement saying that online advertisements made his stomach turn.

With Tumblr’s recent push to start advertising (an initiative that seems like it may be too little, too late), it’s interesting to see how it will make those dollars against what seems to be the ever-rising Pinterest… and eventually bloggers will play into the whole equation.

How do you see the future of the two platforms, and how will it affect how you use them?

[Photo by Alexander Neumann]