Many are aware that Tumblr is one of the most popular blogging platforms on the Internet but now there's some hard data to back up those claims. Web measurement outfit Quantcast claims the service is now among the top 10 most popular destinations in the US following a solid year of growth in 2012.

Tumblr is ranked as the tenth most popular site among Americans. Almost 170 million people visited Tumblr blogs during the past month. For comparison, the platform saw just 120 million visitors at the start of the year in January.

It's a healthy increase even if the majority of Quantcast's traffic figures are based on estimates and projections. The firm shows that traffic to Tumblr has increased almost every month for the past four years. Statistics from other tracking firms, however, might differ.

The Verge points out that Tumblr's success this year had a lot to do with the meme-inducing presidential campaign and a much-improved mobile experience. The service launched a photo sharing application for iOS users early last month.

Tumblr might have had an even better year had it not been for a few shortcomings. The service has a history of not exactly being the most stable destination on the web. For example, the service experienced a massive service outage late last month that lasted for the better portion of a full day. It was estimated that some 77 million blogs were knocked offline as a result.