Tumblr boosted its revenue by 125% by trolling Twitter's blue ticks

Late last year, Twitter introduced paid account verification - those previously free "blue ticks" now cost $8 a month. The social network Tumblr took advantage of the hype and poked fun at Twitter by spoofing the ticks. And the spoof turned out to be quite lucrative.

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According to a new analysis of consumer spending in apps, Tumblr's parody of paid verification has already brought the platform a 125 per cent increase in iOS in-app purchase revenue. That's a figure for the period since November, when mock verification was introduced.

In response to Twitter's innovation, the social network introduced "important blue ticks" - two ticks at once for $8. Only it's a one-time fee, not a monthly rate. It's a joke tick because the platform doesn't have a user verification procedure, and there are hardly any celebrities out there.

Nevertheless, users appreciated the humour: their spending on the Tumblr iOS app has increased since the launch of the double blue tick and now stands at $263,000 in net revenue. That's not much, but it's still a 125% increase in revenue. It's probably not just the parody verification that takes the credit - Tumblr also offers other in-app purchases, including ad-free browsing.

In addition, since November 2022, the number of iOS installations of Tumblr has jumped 56% over the previous three months to 934,000.

Source: TechCrunch