[Posted on November 1, 2007 - 4:31 PM]
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DiggDavid Karp, the 21-year-old founder of blog tool maker Tumblr Inc., which recently got $750,000 in seed funding from Union Square Ventures and other Silicon Alley investors, stopped by Tech Confidential's office to tell us about the new release of Tumblr and share with us his vision for the company.
Karp says he's not interested in cashing out to ... hmmm, let's see ... Google Inc. in a couple of years, preferring to build a company that would employ him and others 10 or even 20 years from now. "What a beautiful notion," he says. It could be, depending on the place (evidently Karp's never met my editor -- just kidding, boss).
The new version of Tumblr, which launched Thursday, is the startup's third release since premiering in March. Users can now include audio and video snippets in their tumbelogs, which are fluid collections of short posts and images. The video support comes courtesy of Tumblr's partnership with video-sharing site Vimeo Inc., whose founder, Jakob Lodwick, is one of Tumblr's angels and, even more important, isn't afraid to wear a head band. The update also adds channels, which Karp describes as a way to share content with a designated group of people. Tumblr also will soon start indexing all of its stuff, which along with enhancing search will enable greater functionality, such as browsing by tags.
Says Karp in a post describing the new features: "Two things were clear as we were building the next version of Tumblr: Lots of new features would require a very refined interface so as not to be overwhelming. And mobile was going to become very important."
Another investor, Union Square Ventures' Fred Wilson, told us over the phone that he's excited about Tumblr's new user interface, which is designed around the iPhone. "It's a significant leap forward in ease of use, simplicity and elegance," he says.
For Wilson, the integration with mobile phones means he can "walk down the street, see something neat and share it on my blog," he adds. "That will take 30 seconds instead of 10 minutes, which will fundamentally change the way we communicate."
It's easy to see why Wilson, Lodwick, Spark Capital's Bijan Sabet and others are drawn to Karp and Tumblr. Fine, it's a cool service. But he's also prompt, polite, candid and engaging. And something of a boy genius. At 11, he was reading "HTML for Dummies," and at 14 he dropped out of the Bronx High School of Science after his freshman year to work full-time for TV producer Fred Seibert on early social networking Web sites. - Mary Kathleen Flynn
See David Karp's tumblelog
See Fred Wilson's tumblelog
See Oct. 24 post from Tech Confidential
