David Karp Headlines On Drudge! -
But what is a “mico-blog”?
ShortFormBlog: To the people complaining that "Yahoo will ruin Tumblr like it ruined Flickr" -
I am super bored of hearing this.
Could Yahoo have done a better job of managing Flickr? Absolutely.
In retrospect, if they’d been patient and poured money into it like Facebook did with their own photo-sharing features, Flickr might have been a lot bigger. (Facebook is by far the world’s biggest photo-sharing site, and tagged photos was key to its early growth, something Flickr didn’t add until 2007)
But that’s in retrospect. In 2005, it wasn’t at all clear what to do. Everyone in the industry was still feeling the burn of gigantic, unprofitable acquisitions prior to the great crash of 2001, so paying money for an barely-profitable site like Flickr still seemed like madness, even within Yahoo. So Yahoo focussed on making it profitable — and succeeded, which is no mean feat.
Could Flickr have done better staying independent? Absolutely no way.
And the way you can tell that for sure is that they let Yahoo acquire them. It’s not like Yahoo in 2005 had a great reputation; the only reason you’d do it is if you were out of money and out of options. In 2005, nobody was going to give Flickr the hundreds of millions of dollars in fresh capital they needed and hope for the best: it was exit or die.
On top of the bare financial reality, it is an open secret at Yahoo (my former employer) that Flickr’s internals are and have always been an architectural nightmare. They had no idea how to scale and needed huge investment just to dig themselves out of the technical debt they’d accrued. It could have been better, sure, but without Yahoo it would have been much, much worse.
Yahoo didn’t kill Flickr; Yahoo saved Flickr from itself.
Here’s a lesser-heard take on the Yahoo/Tumblr thing from Laurie Voss, who is a former Yahoo employee and has some good insight on the matter as a result.
(via seattle-gadgets)
Evan's Blog. Meh.: I know I'm gonna get shit for this but... -
…I like the Yahoo purchase of Tumblr (if it happens).
Tumblr needs something to happen. This is clear. The team in place has taken the company as far as it can go. They are creators - builders of stuff - they are not managers. This lack of experience has caused issues at Tumblr that have hurt…
Interesting opinion, Evan. Thanks for sharing. How do you see this impacting Vimeo? (If at all)
“David is very charming, and clearly very very bright, and understands the product,” said an executive who talked to Tumblr about the role. But, “he’s incredibly confrontation averse, and there’s almost a ‘Game of Thrones’ palace feeling to the management team.” —
Will Yahoo Try to Get Its “Cool Again” by Doing a Deal for Tumblr?
Oh god, as someone who worked for both Yahoo and Tumblr — I am at a loss for words. And who’s this ‘source’ with this crazy quote? It just makes me start putting roles to people: Joffrey, Sansa — who the heck is Tyrion?!
Keep on shipping cool stuff, guys!
PS I love how this executive who shall not be name threw in the word “incredible” in there.
(via joshuanguyen)We are the product
(via joshuanguyen)
I like how the wall pattern is coming from his eyes.
Yahoo reportedly eyeing Tumblr for possible $1 billion acquisition
Yeah.no.
Whoa!
Tumblr/David Karp on Jeopardy
Oh I know! I know!
Tumblr modified the design for the archive (and the mass post editor).