Person who invented tumblr

And when he was 20, he founded Tumblr , a Web platform inspired by the tumblelog, a blog format which enables short-form, mixed-media posts. Karp wanted to share his life instantaneously, and without the time commitment required of other blogging platforms. More than that, he wanted others to experience the satisfyingly speedy genesis of tumblelog posts.

No post is ever too short or too fast, and no tumblelog ever has too many entries. Karp spoke with mediabistro. Sometime in , I came across a tumblelog called Projectionist. It was actually, at the time, a blog that was tracking all of the tumblelogs on the Web.

These tumblelogs were literally published tools to more easily do what people had been doing back in old Angelfire pages, which was putting up random bits of media and making it look a little bit like a blog. Video will come up in a nice frame, blurbs will come up in nice little bubbles, there will be the ability to make gorgeous typography quotes.

So the first thing that really caught my attention was the blog Projectionist. Urban Baby "gave me a real taste for building products that communities use," says Karp. In , CNET acquired the site for an undisclosed amount and Karp, then chief technology officer, earned some capital from the buy-out. He used it to set up his first company, Davidville. When Tumblr took off, Karp became a New York celebrity. He made the most of it. The New York Observer and Maxim published profiles; New York magazine put him on the cover; one long article in Details, "The Playboys of Tech", described Karp as a "fameballer" someone who seeks celebrity.

While Karp played the tech man about town, Tumblr faced problems. In June , the site went down for nearly a whole weekend. One user, William Tildesly, emailed Tumblr to complain. Karp replied, cc'ing his whole team: "we have no interest in customers that will go out of their way to discourage our entire team Please go away.

Nor does he regret his fameballing days. I thought it was funny. Not having had the opportunity to game the social system in high school and college, this was a chance to dick around It was a chance to see how high I could climb in the ranks of this stupid little social system [of New York media].

Still, those around him were concerned. David was not a particularly social animal. And all of a sudden there were people around him who wanted to go and get drunk with him, girls who wanted to go and get with him. Karp did. These days, he gets into the office about 9. He has a steady girlfriend, Rachel Eakley, a graduate student in psychology, and they share a French bulldog called Clark. Maloney is relieved: "He's much more settled down now.

Thank God those days are behind us. Tumblr now employs around 60 people. Many of the new hires are focused on turning it into a profitable business. Mark Coatney, a former Newsweek journalist, advises businesses on how to use Tumblr.

He describes the platform as a "content-sharing network" which companies can use to build a new, younger audience. It's also really great to see the reaction of Tumblr bloggers when we 'like' their McQ related posts -- we'll find them taking screenshots of it and reblogging or sharing their excitement. Karp isn't worried about revenues just yet. Tumblr has experimented with the first, charging individual users, as well as corporates, to push themselves up the directory.

There aren't those platforms for driving attention to creative works and media. Karp expects these features to be live by the end of the year and to make money in The app-store ecosystem is already bringing in some cash. It's worth "millions of dollars a year" and enough to cover a small proportion of Tumblr's operating costs, according to Maloney. Karp says some of the theme designers are making hundreds of thousands of dollars. Tumblr also faces other challenges, notably content rights and pornography.

Karp is sanguine. Tumblr's an excellent platform for porn, which I don't personally have any moral opposition to.

As Karp sees it, disparate threads such as porn, The 99 Per Cent blog and the corporate accounts can coexist on his platform: he wants to enable creators whatever their field or interest. And to be current with the current generation of technology, and progress as the technology progresses.

That's a very different vision to Facebook's, which is a constantly evolving platform where they're piling all their new functionality on it. And I still felt sad of course, but it helped to hear from them. Do you use Tumblr? Do you find its minimalism to be positive or negative? Let us know in the comments! My pleasure! Tumblr really is a fixture online; so many people gain a lot of joy from it every day.

Our pleasure! The interviews with Molina and Neukirchen for this story were conducted over the past year, well before the Yahoo deal surfaced. I had asked both men if they felt any sort of resentment toward Karp for using their creations to build his blogging empire, and they'd said no. When I circled back after Yahoo's deal, Neukirchen declined to comment, but Molina's answer was the same: No. I'm not saying that's what I want. I just think it's interesting how the last one wins.

Read the full article here. For you. World globe An icon of the world globe, indicating different international options. Get the Insider App.