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Tumblr brings twist to year-end lists

Site flaunts its hipster credentials

SAN FRANCISCO — Tumblr is where the Internet’s cool kids hang out. That’s why Yahoo paid $1.1 billion to buy the blogging site in one of this year’s most buzzed-about deals.

Now, Tumblr is flaunting its hipster credentials with a first breakdown of the year’s hottest trends, topics and celebrities.

The retrospective starts today with an exploration of 20 categories ranging from the most popular musical groups to the most interesting architecture of 2013. Boasting a plethora of images, the review will continue through December with daily posts that will culminate on New Year’s Eve with the best fireworks displays featured on Tumblr during the year.

Similar end-of-the-year lists are annual rites at Yahoo, Google and other websites equipped with search engines that sort through billions of requests for information to determine which topics piqued people’s interests.

Tumblr’s musings figure to stand out because they are drawn from a younger audience that differs from the more conventional crowds that flock to general-purpose search engines.

More than half of Tumblr’s 170 million users are younger than 35, a demographic that has helped turn the service into a freewheeling forum filled with provocative imagery, snarky humor and occasionally ribald commentary.

“The people on Tumblr never cease to amaze me with their creativity and their wit and the amount of fun they are having online,” said Danielle Strle, Tumblr’s director of product for content and community. “There are certain things they are crazy about that I am sure that a more general Internet audience is not super nuts about.”

Tumblr’s eclectic tastes are evident in some of the categories featured in the service’s year-end roundup. Entire sections will be devoted to photo bombing, fingernail art, unicorns, bacon, pretty colors, and the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities.

In contrast, the annual lists released by the mainstream search engines tend to be more prosaic and predictable recitations that pore through the most popular celebrities, movies, singers, TV shows, and news stories.

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