The Day of the Doctor on Tumblr: The Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special
Tumblr is made for fandoms (Tumblr + Fandom = OTP, if you will) and if last weekend’s Tumblr activity around the 50th anniversary episode of Doctor Who is any indication, the Doctor Who fandom is the biggest of them all.
On Saturday, November 23rd - the day the 50th anniversary special aired - 1 million people shared 5 million posts on Tumblr. Those posts earned another 3.1 million likes that day.
With a whole host of activities organized around the anniversary, Doctor Who fans had plenty to keep them busy. That includes the airing of the episode and special events - both online and in-person - throughout the weekend. Over the three-day anniversary celebration, more than 10.6 million total posts from 2 million people were shared on Tumblr, and another 1.4 million tweets (from more than 500k people) were posted to Twitter. This is huge engagement from a very active fan base.
The most popular Doctor Who fan post from the weekend has already earned 143k notes, while the most popular post from the official Doctor Who blog has earned 142k notes. The official Doctor Who blog knows, loves, and fully embraces its fandom. The gif in their top post is from the 50th anniversary special and celebrates very poignantly and simply the last fifty years of the show, while the fan post reflects how deeply connected many of the fans feel with the show, regardless of their age (and therefore the number of years they’ve had to become involved with it).
Over on Twitter, the most popular Doctor Who tweet over the weekend was from the official @BBCDoctorWho Twitter account, and featured a still image from the anniversary special of the new Doctor’s eyes. It has earned well over 6,000 retweets so far.
For Tumblr, these are the biggest numbers we’ve seen so far for a televised event. In comparison, the MTV Video Music Awards - previously the largest event - earned 2.1 million posts from 1.1 million contributors in a day, and the Super Bowl saw 1.5 million posts from 1.1 million people.
These numbers show us yet again that Tumblr is the place to go for a deep dive into a fandom for a show you love. Only on Tumblr would Doctor Who outperform the Super Bowl, and we love it for that very reason. That is, in the words of Nine, “Fantastic!”
