

Tumblr: ‘It Was the Biggest Game of Chicken I’ve Ever Seen.’ - cpymchn
http://nymag.com/news/business/boom-brands/tumblr-2013-10/index1.html#print

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sp332
Did anyone else feel like the description of people's appearance was
judgmental? Maybe I'm reading too much into it.

Edit: After a second reading, I think I've cracked it. The author is
describing Karp as currently immature, but gradually developing into CEO
material. So the descriptions separate each aspect of his appearance and
personality into "immature", "developing", or "CEO-like".

~~~
badman_ting
Yes, absolutely. I am getting really tired of this hoodie-bashing thing, after
Zuckerberg and now Karp. People would rightly find it outrageous if a woman
sold her company and all the media could comment on was her clothes.

~~~
sp332
Is that sarcastic? I feel like that scenario is very plausible.

~~~
Smudge
Plausible, perhaps. Still outrageous.

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debacle
It's interesting that the author noted that moot is not CEO material when he
has 4chan. In ten years, moot will still have 4chan and tumblr will be a
memory.

~~~
GuiA
Yes. 4chan is ten years old, and does not have to raise money or please their
executive board to survive.

Grassroots communities are by nature more durable than ones artificially built
by millions in venture money. One potential exception to that rule is Reddit;
it'll be interesting to see what becomes of it.

~~~
josh2600
Did they ever take money beyond the YC seed check before they sold to Conde
Nast?

Reddit was a massive community before the acquisition and 100k is hardly
oodles of venture money, right?

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sbierwagen

      When asked a question that bores him, his eyes go 
      unreactive, and there’s a nearly audible shutdown noise as 
      he disengages. Among the topics that bore him are cars (“I 
      don’t like cars anymore”); Internet comments (“Gross”); his 
      company’s colossally expensive infrastructure (“I have a 
      very rudimentary understanding of how Tumblr actually works 
      these days”); and management (“I’m not super-passionate 
      about how we run the company”).
    

So what does he... do? Count his money all day?

~~~
blazingfrog2
He flies drones in the office.

~~~
georgemcbay
Primarily to annoy people, it seems. Sounds like a fucking horrible place to
work.

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EStudley
I find it interesting that moot was there talking about Canvas, they really
snuck that in in the last paragraph.

~~~
debacle
Maybe Yahoo is going to buy 4chan.

:)

~~~
ihsw
4chan recently created self-serve ads to help boost revenues, perhaps the same
model would work for Tumblr users.

Then again what would a bunch of 15 year olds be advertising to each-other?

~~~
debacle
I'm not really sure if you're referring to 4chan or tumblr with your 15 year
old comment - 4chan is a diverse place, and means a lot of things to different
people. I could see self-serve ads working better for them than for reddit.

~~~
josh2600
Example: DuckDuckGo has placed some excellent ads on 4chan over the years and
eat24 did a great blog post on advertising on porn sites.

Alternative channels have crazy low CPM and CPC.

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notaddicted
Hilarious quote of Marco Arment from 4 years ago:

 _When a similar idea circulated back in 2009, Tumblr’s then–lead developer,
Marco Arment, summed up the party line in a scornful blog post: “I hope they
let me work on some of the many exciting projects at Yahoo … I want to move to
California and get stuck in traffic every day on the way to my midlevel
engineering job where I sit in a cubicle all day and can’t make any product
decisions while working on something nobody will ever see to manage regional
ad clickthrough stats tracking.” Thanks, but no thanks._

~~~
eeeeaaii
Most arrogant quote I've ever heard coming from a developer. I hope this
sounded different in context because that is one of the most horrible and
elitist things I've ever heard pertaining to our industry.

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brown9-2
Is tumblr really "the most successful start-up in New York"?

What about Doubleclick?

~~~
eCa
Founded in 1995, bought by Google in early 2008 for $3b. Not a startup any
more.

~~~
brown9-2
So what is the definition of "most successful startup" being used here? Is it
historical? Is it just number of users, or acquisition price? It certainly
can't be revenue if Tumblr is the king.

I know it's a small aside in the article but it always irks me how these type
of labels get tossed around without any actual consideration by the tosser as
to what it means.

~~~
omonra
"So what is the definition of "most successful startup" being used here" \--I
guess not making money?

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wmeredith
What's wrong with the mobile scrolling on that site. The article is
unreadable.

~~~
charlus
It's the same on desktop, and I think it's because it links to the print copy,
which has completely broke scrolling/keys functionality. The paged copy is
fine however, and I'd like to think this is not deliberate.

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ffrryuu
It was/is a bubble and your timing was right on.

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Sniffnoy
Why does this link to the second page...?

~~~
Pwntastic
Looks like it links to the second page, but pops up the printable copy that
has the entire article.

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jgalt212
I can't read another piece on Karp. The guy is addicted to magazine/newspaper
profiles of himself. Nary have I read an article on Tumblr that didn't focus
mainly on Karp. I'm pretty sure if Ali G were still doing his thing, he could
easily dupe Karp into taking an interview--he's just that desperate to be on
camera.

