Does PostDesk Debates only host one "debate" at a time? I find it odd that an article with such a pejorative tone is the only content on their site.
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"
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm the author of the article and I can honestly say that "SEO for keywords related to the founder, his company's name, and related variables" is not what we're trying to do. The article is simply speculation about what having a founder with this kind of attitude might mean - and it's also speculation as to the direction Tumblr is heading in under the leadership of David Karp. I just found it quite interesting. On a…
Mr. England, your post went on for thousands of words psychoanalyzing the guy and his motives ("abruptly...knee-jerk response...defensive...something to hide....care-free and cavalier...", and so on ad nauseum). Something about the tone set off my metal detectors, as did the comments by robyn_b here, which reminded me of the way people on 4chan work someone's name into a sentence to make sure that it's the number one…
Sorry but are joking? I read the piece and everything the author said is spot on. It sounds exactly like the ceo has a great deal of insecurities and frankly shouldnt be in the ceo position. Why? Because im sorry but you cant treat users like that. You just cant. Its simply unprofessional. Especially when its not isolated. Tumblr has been having problems for months and they seem to simply not have any interest in fixing it but seem to be more interest in how rich they are.
They need to get off their high horses and fix the problems NOW! If they dont people will simply stop using their service. Especially if that service develops a reputation as having an asshole for a ceo. Especially at the startup stage.
Sadly it seems in this country that arrogance and egomania are being mistaken for talent. When tech founders are assholes people laud them instead of putting them in their place. Its really annoying and i see it here all of the time on HN.
Re: Should Tumblr care? David Karp tells users who complain to "go away"
#83Companies reserve the right to fire customers. I respect this attitude.
Re: Should Tumblr care? David Karp tells users who complain to "go away"
#84Just saw the full email from Williams. Looks like he was threatening to leave Tumblr if issues aren't addressed in near future.
Have things really been that bad to leave their platform?
Re: Should Tumblr care? David Karp tells users who complain to "go away"
#85One very important point that William fails to mention about his email to us - he spent the time to track down every Tumblr employees email and sent it to the entire team. It was way over-the-top, and yes, discouraging to the team. The idea that David Karp, who I've work closely for eight years over two startups, is arrogant and doesn't care about the community, is completely off base. And anyone who knows David will…
Im sorry but rather being respectful to the problems that hes having as a paid premium user all youre doing is being condescending and downright rude to the guy. Personally if i was the guy id stop using your company.
You know if you had treated him with respect and actually discussed the problems with him and apologized and just simply said youre working on it and sorry for the problems. Youd probably have a happy customer for life. Instead you have people that have nothing to do with the situation making it much much much worse then it could have been. Not a very good business move frankly. I mean they teach this stuff in entrepreneurship 101.
Re: Should Tumblr care? David Karp tells users who complain to "go away"
#86From what I understand, Tumblr is an extremely small company. Your local Denny's has more people on payroll. NYC is running out of top-notch developers (thus why Bloomberg goes out of his way to tell people from other cities to move to his). Finding and hiring people who fit your company and managing them is a time-consuming process if you want to do it right. Nothing about what they're doing or will have to do is easy. Ultimately, they need to find people who have experience with scaling massive apps, which means headhunting at Google and Facebook. Not saying they shouldn't fix the problem, but I can understand the frustration their team is experiencing.
Re: Should Tumblr care? David Karp tells users who complain to "go away"
#87Give David a break. First of all, he's a very nice guy. Secondly, he's not running a corner greengrocer, he's running a site that's growing supernaturally fast and which has completely, utterly displaced myspace as the place where high school kids share. Tumblr has five MILLION visitors every single day, almost none of whom pay a dime. You can't run a service like that the same way you run an enterprise software comp…
so what if Karp is a nice guy?
it is not about whether he is nice guy or not,but how customers (free & paying) are treated.
Are you saying that since millions of customers are getting a free service ("five MILLION visitors every single day, almost none of whom pay a dime.") and so should expect a lower level of service ?
it clearly shows the frustration on Karp's part and that he is not able to handle the pressures.
Re: Should Tumblr care? David Karp tells users who complain to "go away"
#88Remember: Tumblr may not have an export feature, but Posterous has a great import feature.
Its called RSS.
Re: Should Tumblr care? David Karp tells users who complain to "go away"
#89Without the original e-mail sent to Tumblr, it's hard to judge the appropriateness of Karp's response. Under most circumstances, it's rude to tell your customers to go away. But if a rare customer behaves abusively—particularly towards your employees or other customers—it may be the correct decision to politely decline their business. Of course, if lots of your customers are behaving abusively, you've got bigger prob…
Just got in touch with William to ask if I could post up the original e-mail in its entirety - and he said that was fine. I've added the original email to the bottom of the article. http://postdesk.com/debates/should-tumblr-care/
My comment appeared to have been temporarily removed from the postdesk.com blog entry, after I tried to share John Maloney's statement that the email had been sent to every employee at Tumblr: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2152203
Edit: I spoke too soon; either I missed it as I read the comments or my comment was re-enabled.
Re: Should Tumblr care? David Karp tells users who complain to "go away"
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just got in touch with William to ask if I could post up the original e-mail in its entirety - and he said that was fine. I've added the original email to the bottom of the article. http://postdesk.com/debates/should-tumblr-care/
[Edit: Substantially rewritten in light of #2, below.] Thank you. It looks like Postdesk started a public controversy while leaving out two critical pieces of information: 1) William's actual e-mail, which expresses his disappointment in a reasonably polite fashion. Normally, this sort of e-mail should merit a polite response and a refund. 2) The allegation that William send the email to the entire engineering team (…
Im sorry but this doesnt hold water when tumblr has 40 million in vc funding. If they were bootstrapped then yes maybe. But if his team is stressed out maybe they could start hiring people. Instead they are causing situations like this to happen.
Also im sorry but i dont care how stressed out you are. As a ceo you have a responsibility to treat your customers with respect. Especially since what the customer was asking was so simply and basic and straightforward. Its not like the emailer sent a nasty mean email calling everybody names and asking them why the service isnt working in harsh ways and being disrespectful.
He sent a very polite email to the people working there. Theres absolutely nothing wrong with that at all. Its part of doing business and doing customer service.
The response frankly was absolutely ridiculous. At the very least the response could have been more polite and simply said we apologize and are working on it.