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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"

#101

Post by clojurerocks »

spolsky wrote: post #36
robyn_b wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Bubbie, you don't know what you're talking about. Do you really think that Tumblr isn't aware of it's flaws? Are you seriously claiming that David is denying that they had a few outages? Very, very few mass services grew as quickly as Tumblr without a lot of outages. Ebay had them, Yahoo had them, Twitter had them. The idea that David is sitting in a room like Mubarak, denying the flaws and refusing to work on them,…

As someone who uses stackoverflow almost daily im absolutely astonished at how disrespectful and frankly clueless your response is. Ive been following architecture for a long time and remember when the companies you mention had scaling issues. I dont remember them lashing out at their customers and telling them to fuck off assholes! Also when ebay and yahoo started having scaling issues THERE WERE NO CASE STUDIES IN SCALING. They had to figure it out all on their own so people gave them slack.

Now there are upteen startups that have dealt with 100 times the traffic that tumblr is dealing with. And many of them without 40 million dollars in fudning. Plus theres something called the cloud.

Its becoming obvious that egomania is becoming epidemic int eh world of tech startups. Which is just sad.

Also while the emailer was asking about scaling problems which have been going on for far too long at tumblr from what ive read, the issue here isnt with that its with the ridiculous response that the ceo sent.

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

#102

Post by wtildesley »

JohnMaloney wrote: post #41

One 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…

John, first of all I didn't email your entire staff only the people who I thought would respond to my concerns. I never expected to receive an email from David directly. Secondly, It wasn't hard to 'track down every Tumblr employees email' your email addresses are quite easy to figure out, take yours for example 'john@tumblr.com' and your employees are featured on your about page.

I would also like to point out that after I sent the email I tried to have a discussion with David directly but unfortunately he ignored my emails.

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

#103

Post by earl »

wtildesley wrote: post #32

William checking in here - the recipient of the e-mail from Mr Karp. So I'm sitting here just waiting for my blog to be deleted...

Seriously? You took the time to dig up emails for a bunch of employees to whine at all of them, and you couldn't do this? http://lmgtfy.com/?q=tumblr+exporter

You then had your friend PR whore on the internet, without mentioning at first that you wrote, "I would move to a different service, but with no export feature [...]".

If a customer is that unhappy, you should leave. And tell your friends that run crap startups to see if the shoe fits a little differently when one of their customers digs up the email addresses of all their engineers to whinge at.

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

#104

Post by PaulHoule »

I can't understand why there aren't more complaints that "tumblr"="spam". Whenever I see a page on tumblr, it's always one sentence and a link to something else. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places, but I never see any content of value on tumblr.

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

#105

Post by rhizome »

clojurerocks wrote: post #82
ramanujan wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fix…

They need to get off their high horses and fix the problems NOW! If they dont people will simply stop using their service.

Is that so? How many people will stop using Tumblr based on the outcome of this controversy? How many permanently stopped using Twitter during (what I call) The Blaine Transition?

Especially if that service develops a reputation as having an asshole for a ceo.

Oh, this is good. Name one time this has happened in the entire history of business. I have a feeling you're indulging in pointed opinions to make the case that site quality affects retention and conversion. OK, but that's not a newsflash. What makes Tumblr different, such that they need to "fix the problems NOW!"? I'm sure they're not just sitting back drinking lattes while they watch the support queue grow.

Taking your tone, one might read between the lines to interpret your attitude as just competitive sour grapes between Clojure and Scala. How fair is that?

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

#106

Post by inovica »

spolsky wrote: post #33
inovica wrote: 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…

Oh please, get over yourself. David started a company when he was 20.... obvious proof that he's extremely mature for his age, not immature. Let me know when you're running a successful website that zoomed to the top 50 in a couple of years and which serves 5 million people every single day before your 24th birthday. Picking on him for one email instead of his very impressive life's work, and self-righteously proclai…

Thanks for the response, although I think that it was disproportionate response to what I was saying. Basically I believe he made a mistake and it is a measure of someone in terms of how you deal with that. I respect someone much more when they apologize for making a mistake - we're all human after all. Also, I believe my advice was sound. Sometimes you do need to think before acting. Thats the basis of what I was trying to say. I appreciate, from viewing the other responses that you have made on here, that you know David quite well and its obvious you have a strong opinion, but I can only base mine on what I have seen.

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

#107

Post by rhizome »

JamieEi wrote: post #58
JohnMaloney wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it does - and William can confirm this was the case

Meh, it means that the guy sending the email is a bit loony. It doesn't excuse responding in kind. Karp and Tumblr are a big deal. They should set a higher standard for themselves.

I see, so the user is merely "loony," for mass-emailing the entire Tumblr headcount with his screed, but Karp is a mean and incompetent boob who should be replaced and [your favorite punishment here] for responding naturally to that situation? Karp's sentiment wasn't directed at all users, he was telling a loony to not be so loony, but loony man can't recognize the social cues involved and so generalizes Karp's response to the entire universe of Tumblr users. Loony.

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

#108

Post by wtildesley »

rationalbeaver wrote: post #52
JohnMaloney wrote: post #41

One 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…

"One 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." Assuming that is true, your comment deserves more attention. It changes the situation significantly.

His comment is not true. As I've already stated I emailed only those who I thought would respond to my concerns. I never expected to receive an email from David directly.

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

#109

Post by rhizome »

clojurerocks wrote: post #85
JohnMaloney wrote: post #41

One 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 c…

Have you ever worked for a business that has had site problems? Let me tell you, when you are trying to fix something that can't be fixed in two minutes, some guy emailing the entire company saying "i hate u and u have no export functionality," when Tumblr indeed has a lot of export functionality, then "go away" is perfectly appropriate.

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

#110

Post by huertanix »

clojurerocks wrote: post #93
aristotlenova wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what you're saying is that this entire article is a hit piece that has nothing that remotely resembles objectivity or that has made any effort to actually tell both sides of the story. Fascinating. Don't you love it when bloggers use their magic publish button to settle petty personal issues? Awesome. Thanks for wasting 15 minutes of my day.

Im sorry but ive read a couple of youre comments and you say the same thing over and over again. Not dealing with the problems he mentions but simply attacking him personally. Which just makes his case look stronger and tumblr look more like a bunch of immature idiots.

They're not a "bunch," they're like, a dozen. A dozen people trying to make a site work for several millions of people at once. That's no short order for such a small team.
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