One of the great sleepers of the social platforms, Tumblr, which Yahoo paid $1 billion for in 2013, is headed for a billion users and Australia is the first market outside the US to test the ambition, says 29-year-old founder David Karp.
While Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat and Instagram get most of the market attention, Tumblr has for the past year outpaced them all as the planet's fastest growing social and blogging platform. Mr Karp claims a worldwide monthly user base of 600 million and 235 million registered bloggers. In Australia Tumblr claims a monthly audience of 4.6 million, making it bigger than Twitter. 
Mr Karp, who was in Australia last week, is convinced Tumblr can head into lofty Facebook territory, crashing through 1 billion users. He won't be drawn on timing but according to GlobalWebIndex's   March quarter report, Pinterest and Tumblr were the two biggest winners for active usage growth in the past year, up 97 per cent and 95 per cent respectively. "That Facebook has an image problem among certain key demographics is clear," it said in its latest social trends report. "While 37 per cent of all adults name Facebook as the "coolest" network, just 14 per cent of teens agree."
Tumblr's rising stock with the young crowd is fuelling Mr Karp's grand plans for growth.
"We can crack a billion users, absolutely," he told The Australian Financial Review. "I'm hoping we get there by bringing more and more visibility to the extraordinary creators on Tumblr all over the world. We've done a good job of doing that in the US and I think there's some incredible people in Australia doing some incredible stuff on Tumblr. Australia is our first market outside the US for this new global focus. There's been a real draw and demand from the community here and whenever that exists you get the kind of organic pull and demand from the industry."
The difference with Tumblr to Facebook and Twitter is that most of its content is originally created on the platform by Tumblr users via short-form blogs, many of them visual. It eschews the heavy reliance Facebook and Twitter have for users sharing professionally created content from outside to their social networks, which is creating distribution havoc for media companies already struggling with the economics of content creation.
"Just about all the social networks today are really orientated around the people you know or the celebrities you wish you knew, what's going on with your friends, where they are, what they are reading, what they're talking about," Mr Karp said. "Tumblr kind of totally turns that on its head. It's much less about the people that you know, much more about the stuff you love, much more about the people that are making stuff, about the genres of content, art and media you're obsessed with. Tumblr exposes you to stuff you had no idea existed and might never know anything about. It's not just about showing up on Facebook to see what your friends are up to and posting. The average post on Tumblr is re-blogged [on Tumblr] 14 times. It's not bringing stuff from the outside world in."
During Mr Karp's Australian trip he briefed blue chip advertisers and ad agencies on its plans here, led by Yahoo7. Forget traditional advertising formats such as banner ads. Tumblr is all about "native content", requiring advertisers to create bespoke messages and creative themes. Woolworths is producing new spins on "sponsored posts" with recipe ideas while CanalPlus has used Tumblr extensively in recent weeks to launch a Zac Efron film due to hit the box office this week called We Are Your Friends. "Tthat 16 to 24-year-old segment, they're hard to reach so we're using it quite heavily for this film," said Studio Canal's marketing manager Tiffany Millane.