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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 quickly as possible.

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.

And Steve Jobs could kick a puppy as his next "one more thing." It doesn't mean shareholders would be happy about it.

"We can afford it" is a terrible response to bad PR. He needs to act quickly and make this right. Apologize. Give the guy a free account or something. Everything is (mostly) better.

I'm convinced that half of a PR person's work is convincing others to get over themselves.

If someone -- or any company for the matter -- can afford or not bad PR is way beyond the point.

The thing is : you usersy might be wrong,or might be right ; but the point is more that users are your even more than your whole business, giving them a good experience is your ultimate goal ; not just selling them a microblogging app.

In my opinion, comparison to steve jobs / apple here are extremely irrelevant ; yes, steve jobs might have earned the right to be obnoxious to bad clients, but the point is that apple as a company doesn't.

For one thing, its because their marketing goes hand in hand with their excellent customer service that this company is successful. Not because one compensate for the other. Its really a shame that somebody can treat its user base like that.

> It doesn't mean shareholders would be happy about it.

Actually, shareholders would probably be ecstatic.

... And Apple forums would be rife with explanations about how kicking is a better way to interface with puppies than petting them.

Apple’s stocks haven’t grown very rapidly in the last months, at least compared to Apple’s earnings. Apple is making shitloads of money, giving shareholders every reason to be ecstatic but they don’t really seem to be. Apple’s stock is growing conservatively.

@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.

That explains a lot

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?

Perhaps, but tech geeks and early adopters like us can have a big influence on the swing of the pendulum and whether something is cool and hip, or lame. If more Tumblr fans become ex-Tumblr fans, then your tune might change.

Early adopters influence initial take up. Tumblr is way beyond this now. Once it's reached the high school kids, then it can't really be called "early" any more.

They'll only move on once the service is no longer seen as cool, and the early adopters have - at a modest estimate - absolutely nothing at all to do with this.

Google Ratners jewellery

@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.

Reading an article does not confirm anything.

For the record, David and I have hung out a few times (not like we're BFFs or anything) but I think really highly of the guy and his character. I'd say he's a visionary and nice guy. I don't think he's trying to be Steve Jobs.

Do you think he's being a nice guy in that email?

It's not like people are either nice or mean. Everyone is a combination of both.

Hitler loved his dog yada yada

I've worked for David for two years. I can honestly say he is the nicest person I've ever met. Genuinely kind and thoughtful, and wants the best for the site and the people that use it.

There was nothing self-righteous or whiny about the blog post or the original email. Both contained substantive and completely reasonable criticisms to which you have responded with name-calling and CAPS LOCK.

I agree that the article was neither self-righteous nor whiny.

However, the quoted email definitely was.

(So I guess spolsky referred mostly to that one, not just the article around it.)

I thought the original email was a lot less deserving of a flippant response than the hatchet job blog post.

The guy sent an honest and respectful email asking for help...I don't think his email was unreasonable. What was unreasonable was the "go away" line in David's response. That is simply juvenile and more importantly, completely unnecessary.

Exactly. It's funny that some people are 'blaming the customer' for loving a service so much that he gets upset when the people who run it act like this.

Not only can they not be trusted to run the service, but they act unprofessional when you complain. Customers complain, get over it. Learn to deal with it constructively.

David's response is not constructive and William's feedback is very valuable. Period.

I don't think anyone is saying David chuckles in the sight of recent outages. The email which was sent does not seem to be a personal attack on David's character and - apart from some random comments - nobody seems to speak bad of David himself.

I'm a Tumblr user and will keep using it for the very reason that the service is simply growing too fast for them to keep up at the moment, but in the end I believe it will stabilize.

That being said, a response like that is just utter crap. (Sidenote: so far, I have seen a copy/paste of the entire message (?) that was supposably sent to Tumblr, but only excerpts of the reply that was received)

Replying in a normal manner to someone that sends a normal e-mail is not something that is left to be done for PR teams and customer service departments.

It really is not that hard. We all say stuff that comes out wrong and there is no need to blow it out of proportion. Seeing that is has already done that, it would probably be a good display of character to set things straight, even if there seems to be nothing to gain from it.

As far as the article is concerned: I believe it could have been written a lot better. Catchphrases like "Could David Karp be the downfall of Tumblr?" are inappropriate and belong in gossip-magazines. The number of claims and experiences on which this article is based (or at least, references) is too low to make it believable and the tone of the article ("Tumblr has been ignoring complaints routinely for the past year whilst Karp apparently indulges in the money he gains from funding") does not really stand out as objective to me.

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. If the customer is being rude, you have the right to not answer.

There are definitely times when you should tell a customer to go away. Any time a customer is seriously diverting you from where you need to be as a business, you have a potential time to say "find somebody else."

However, this customer was complaining about the core business, not some diversion. Even if he was diverting, there are far more appropriate ways to say good-bye.

It sounds to me like David heard once "don't keep customers who aren't profitable" but never internalized what that really means.

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.

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.

He did insult them (or at least paint himself into a luser corner) by saying they had no export functionality.

How exactly did I insult them? And please point to anywhere on tumblr's website where I can export my content? Even Facebook, one of the most closed eco-systems on the web lets users download their own content.

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.

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.

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.

> You can't have a PR team and a customer service department that makes sure everybody gets a nice reply.

Do you really need a PR/CS team to ensure people get a nice reply? Shouldn't that just be something that a /very nice guy/ would accomplish naturally?

MySpace didn't have these issues though - nor did Twitter (to this extent). It's also a relatively straight forward blogging platform though - it's not particularly hard to figure out how to allocate resources despite exponential growth. The fact is - responding to issues in such a manner might not affect the outlook of Tumblr immediately - but the fact that he does respond to emails like this might be a representation of his overall attitude towards running the site - one which might contribute to the ultimate downfall of the service.

> it's not particularly hard to figure out how to allocate resources despite exponential growth.

http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/revealing_hidden_assumpti...

Does nobody remember LiveJournal? The site with the community that was willing to look past growing pains and security exploits to communicate on their own terms? The "straight forward blogging platform" that created a need for memcached amongst other scaling tools? Read the history of LJ's architecture from 1 server to hundreds: http://www.danga.com/words/2007_06_usenix/usenix.pdf

What do yo mean Myspace and Twitter didnt have these issues? One of the reasons Facebook gained prominents is that in 2005 or so Myspace was down CONSTANTLY. I mean it was never up. They blamed it on coldfusion at the time and eventually moved the site over to Asp.net. Twitter also barely worked because the whole web services architecture was only taking shape so it was designed like an old cms.

Putting that aside this persons response was unprofessional to say the least. He needs to publicly apologize to all of his users and start hiring people who can fix the site. To tell people to fuck off is immature and absolutely ridiculous. Especially when you have so much VC money at your disposal. When Twitter first got funding they spend alot of it on engineering. They went from being on just a few servers which was one of the reasons it was down all of the time. To hundreds of servers to deal with the load. It seems like this guy now thinks he can keep the money to himself and not spend anything expect on pr. Reminds of Friendster actually.

There's a big difference between "sufficiently grovelling" and "go away".

so what if Karp is a nice guy? it is not about whether he is nice guy or not,but how customers (free & paying) are treated.

Are you saying that since millions of customers are getting a free service ("five MILLION visitors every single day, almost none of whom pay a dime.") and so should expect a lower level of service ?

it clearly shows the frustration on Karp's part and that he is not able to handle the pressures.