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Should Tumblr care? David Karp tells users who complain to "go away"

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Re: Should Tumblr care? David Karp tells users who complain to "go away"

#6
I know that Steve Jobs has sent some very short responses before, however this from Karp shows immaturity more than anything. There are times when most of us will receive an email from a client and want to immediately tell them where to go, but the old saying to "sleep on it" really is good advice. I have sometimes waited a day before properly responding to some people and it was the best thing to do in every case. I hope that Karp realises his mistake and makes a public apology. At least this way he would look mature enough to admit his mistakes

Edit: I was about to start a personal blog on Tumblr, and I will not be now due to this article.

Re: Should Tumblr care? David Karp tells users who complain to "go away"

#7
post #5

http://www.davidslog.com/2941069729/200m-page-views-per-week Looks like the downtime isn't slowing them down much.

Whilst it might not slow them down much at the moment due to the viral nature of the site, nor did the lack of innovation and arguably bad leadership at MySpace. I think what the article is trying to say that under the leadership of David Karp it will probably end up going that way - and I agree. In fact although it's different in many ways, look at Chatroulette even - perfect example of what happens when you do nothing with the traffic and don't care about the users who visit the site.

Re: Should Tumblr care? David Karp tells users who complain to "go away"

#9
post #6

I know that Steve Jobs has sent some very short responses before, however this from Karp shows immaturity more than anything. There are times when most of us will receive an email from a client and want to immediately tell them where to go, but the old saying to "sleep on it" really is good advice. I have sometimes waited a day before properly responding to some people and it was the best thing to do in every case. I…

I couldn't agree more - but Karp is just turning out to be really arrogant. It's a great shame as Tumblr has potential to be an amazing service if only those behind it admitted it's flaws and tried to work on them instead of denying they exist.

Re: Should Tumblr care? David Karp tells users who complain to "go away"

#10
A knee-jerk response like this which is immediately defensive clearly shows that Karp has something to hide. Perhaps from this we can ascertain that there is some sort of internal friction with his team – perhaps some dislocation, maybe they’re overworked, or perhaps even some personal insecurity on his part.

Overanalyzing much?

1) It's a response from a 24 year old that build a web business. Considering the manners and attitude of 20-somethings in general, the surprising thing is these kind of responses don't appear more often. Building a web service people use, even a successful one at that, doesn't automatically makes you a savvy businessperson with excellent people skills.

2) Tumblr is down a lot lately (yep, understatement). It is obvious that everyone in the company is burning the midnight oil to fix this, the team is stressed and they work in panic mode. It is also evident that it is not a simple problem (for their skills/resources at least), else they would have fixed it already. So, it's understandable where the defensive tone of mr. Karps response comes from.

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