Companies reserve the right to fire customers. I respect this attitude.
Companies do reserve the right to provide poor customer service. That may not be in their best interest though.
Should Tumblr care? David Karp tells users who complain to "go away"
151–160 of 166 posts
Re: Should Tumblr care? David Karp tells users who complain to "go away"
#152Earlier 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.
You bypassed their provided means for customer service and sent a presumptuous email. Sorry, that entitles you to nothing, even if you are a paying customer (unless direct developer support was part of anything you purchased). Don't crash the party expecting to be welcomed with open arms, or even gently escorted out. Karp could have used more tact, but as far as etiquette goes, he was totally in-line with responding to your message how he did.
Re: Should Tumblr care? David Karp tells users who complain to "go away"
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm no Tumblr expert, but in five minutes of searching I see Tumblr -> Wordpress utils, RSS, and the Tumblr API. That's three methods.
Yes, for a Unix sysadmin I'm sure exporting your content via Tumblr's API, RSS feed or for that matter a Wordpress utility is a breeze but I'm not sure the same is true for your average tumblr user. Having said all that I think you're ignoring what I said for the sake of an argument.
Well I guess that delegitimizes any response I could conceivably make.
Re: Should Tumblr care? David Karp tells users who complain to "go away"
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
@spolsky Why are you so invested in this? If a CEO has nothing good to say, he needs to say nothing. That's his fiduciary responsibility and I'm sure the board has the same opinion.
USV is an investor in StackOverflow and Tumblr.
StackOverflow really doesn't benefit that much if Tumblr turns into a 1Bn company (which it probably will eventually)
If Tumblr makes USV huge returns, they can raise a new fund (not like they would struggle right now..) but most funds require "new investments" so why would Spolsky profit other than being a nice guy?
Re: Should Tumblr care? David Karp tells users who complain to "go away"
#155I have never met David, nor do I know anyone from Tumblr. I've just been a fan. Some people may remember me defending Tumblr when it came up versus the Posterous importing saga.
I've used Tumblr for years. I remember when they launched. I remember when they raised their first round of funding.
I honestly believe that Tumblr has simply grown too fast to scale their operations in a manner that Tumblr is happy with. I think that Tumblr is similar to MySpace in that they constantly think about scaling their service, rather than customer acquisition (ala Posterous.)
These guys are good guys, and are simply caught off guard. Lets not pick on them for making mistakes.
They run a web company - like many of us - hell, if I had 1% of Tumblrs success I'd be arrogant as hell and Tumblr are not.
They are human. David Karp is probably one of the most underrated web entrepreneurs around right now, picking his brains is equal to picking Facebook or Etsy in terms of consumer entrepreneurial advice, IMHO.
Re: Should Tumblr care? David Karp tells users who complain to "go away"
#156As a Tumblr lover (and user #752 on the service), this article is petty, poorly argued and the resultant fanfare unmerited. I have engaged in many email interactions with the Tumblr staff and outside of a few questionable missives, encountered nothing but gracious and welcoming responses. Unlike other cloud services like Google, which is merely interfacing with a Python script HTTP request. That said, Tumblr is strai…
All of these are (as far as I can tell) easy to solve and I ponder almost every day why they are not.
Re: Should Tumblr care? David Karp tells users who complain to "go away"
#157Coincidence or not? This has just been posted on TC 50 minutes ago. http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/28/karp-tumblr-quarter-billion...
Coincidence, sorry author of the article hating on Tumblr.
Re: Should Tumblr care? David Karp tells users who complain to "go away"
#158Give 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, David has a great problem: he's extremely successful and facing the scrutiny of people who think he should be more perfect than he is.
The answer to this problem is never to tell people to "go away." The job is challenging, as you know. You work your ass off, for years. Finally you get something out there, and if you're lucky, people love it.
That's where the modesty has to kick in. Big time.
When you're even a little bit successful, you learn that customers are not bar chums who you punch in the shoulder and laugh when they say something that offends you. You adopt an unusually elevated posture. "Yes, I see what you mean. I probably could have handled that better."
I know you're good at this Joel, so don't hold your friend to a lower standard.
Re: Should Tumblr care? David Karp tells users who complain to "go away"
#159This is one of the problems with cloud platforms. You know how people proudly announce on twitter that they "fired" a customer? What happens if a cloud platform you are using and depends on decide to "fire" you because you're a complainer or a heavy user? If you're a cloud app user, you can't even complain loudly. If you are enemies with your host, they can just decide to kick you off. Even if they resolve it, you'll…
Right but this is always a problem running on someone else's platform. To fix it you have to host everything yourself all the way down to the utilities level, where regulations don't really allow them to play favorites.
Re: Should Tumblr care? David Karp tells users who complain to "go away"
#160Give 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…
There's a big difference between "sufficiently grovelling" and "go away".