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

postdesk.com

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

#121

Post by arepb »

spolsky wrote: post #37
rriepe wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard from an article that I read recently that he wasn't, in fact, a nice guy. Maybe you had different experiences with him, but now most people who have read about him just think he's some 24-year-old punk trying to be Steve Jobs. That's just how this stuff works. Startup, LLC and HugeCorp, Inc. alike can't afford bad PR like this. It was an incredibly stupid move on David's part and he should patch this up as qu…

I'm pretty sure that Tumblr can certainly afford bad PR like this. Show me an example of a company that was, actually, hurt by something like this. One example, please. Every high school kid in New York uses Tumblr every minute of every day. None of them even know who David is, and those that do, revere him.

@spolsky An example of a company that was hurt by the CEO being a dick? Um, I don't know, how about every single one? This is why most CEOs don't do customer service. Especially one that has eleventy billion users and a ton of money.

People often confuse being curt like this with being effective. Often it's just some guy who had a bad day, is an insufferable asshole or some combo of the above. Customer service and 1 on 1 s with users should never be handled by people like that, though.

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

#122

Post by samengland »

larrik wrote: post #46
samengland wrote: post #17

Earlier 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/

In the original email, William clearly says he wants to leave and that the lack of an export feature is the only thing stopping him. That part makes a HUGE difference in the framing of David Karp's.

...and the friendships he had created

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

#123

Post by justin »

rokhayakebe wrote: post #79
spolsky wrote: post #30

Give 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…

Why give him a break? He is a public CEO. If he does well the internet will talk about it. If he does otherwise, well, he can expect the internet to talk about it too. Nobody gives a care if David is the coolest thing on his/your block. There is not one valid reason to tell a customer to "Please go away". You should just take the bullet, apologize for not meeting their expectation and maybe offer your point of view.…

Yes, there is. You should tell customers to go away when they cost you more than they earn you. Costs come in many forms, both monetary and emotional. If dealing with specific complaining users damages team morale, then perhaps the company should consider whether those few users are worth it.

Further, I doubt very much that bad PR like this affects Tumblr. 1) The vast majority of Tumblr users will never hear about this, 2) The ones that do will probably decide whether to continue using the service based on whether or not Tumblr actually solves their downtime problems on an ongoing basis.

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

#124

Post by jonpaul »

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…

If you guys cared immensely, you would respond to my support requests. If you wanted to monetize, maybe you would setup a premium offering. I know that I would gladly pay $50/month to ensure that my blog doesn't have the downtime that it's had in the last few months. I've stated this many times before.

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

#125

Post by jonpaul »

spolsky wrote: post #30

Give 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…

Joel: At the risk of sounding trollish, you read like that Chris Crocker guy of "Leave Brittney Alone" YouTube fame. 1) He's a CEO. He'd better have thick skin to be one. 2) Most of your points are dead on correct. HOWEVER, I've repeatedly begged for a premium offering. I realize that that doesn't seem to be their monetization strategy, so maybe I should look elsewhere if I value my blog so much.

Regardless, the guy is a CEO. He better be able to deal with it. I sincerely hope that this comment doesn't make me sound too insensitive, just a little bit. But his problem is a good one to have, and I would love to have it.

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

#126

Post by aditya »

wtildesley wrote: post #108
rationalbeaver wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

And who exactly did you send the email to?

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

#127

Post by rokhayakebe »

justin wrote: post #123
rokhayakebe wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why give him a break? He is a public CEO. If he does well the internet will talk about it. If he does otherwise, well, he can expect the internet to talk about it too. Nobody gives a care if David is the coolest thing on his/your block. There is not one valid reason to tell a customer to "Please go away". You should just take the bullet, apologize for not meeting their expectation and maybe offer your point of view.…

Yes, there is. You should tell customers to go away when they cost you more than they earn you. Costs come in many forms, both monetary and emotional. If dealing with specific complaining users damages team morale, then perhaps the company should consider whether those few users are worth it. Further, I doubt very much that bad PR like this affects Tumblr. 1) The vast majority of Tumblr users will never hear about th…

There is a difference between "We will understand it if you choose to go with a different company. However you should know and we are working hard at resolving these issues." and "... Please go Away."

Seriously, it is not as if the guy insulted them.

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

#128

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#129

Post by samengland »

kmfrk wrote: post #120
samengland wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're not in the same space. PostDesk, as you should be able to see is a site where editorial/opinion pieces such as the one you've just read are posted. Unfortunately you're trying to uncover a conspiracy which isn't there - though I'll gladly answer any further questions you might have...

You should, amongst other things, definitely write a disclaimer that describes your friendship with William, as he reveals[1]. It might as well be a hit piece as plain sloppy, speculative writing - if Karp had a nickel for every (unanswered) question mark in that article, he'd secure himself another $40 million. [1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2152210 : > prestia: > If this is William, what relationship do y…

The fact that William knows the owner of PostDesk makes no difference to the speculations made in the article about the future of Tumblr under Karp's leadership. Disclosure isn't really needed when the only difference is that he came to us to break the story as opposed to any other news outlet who would have said the same, or similar.

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

#130

Post by samengland »

seanalltogether wrote: post #40
ekidd wrote: post #13

Without 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…

“…we have no interest in customers that will go out of their way to discourage our entire team” Something about that response tells me this wasn't the first email sent by this user.

Surprisingly - it wasn't, and we're still not sure how William was in fact discouraging their entire team...
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