David Karp
David Karp is best known as the founder and former CEO of Tumblr, a popular microblogging platform launched in 2007. Born on July 6, 1986, in Manhattan, Karp exhibited an early interest in technology and entrepreneurship, dropping out of high school to pursue homeschooling and later working as a software consultant for an online parenting forum. He co-developed Tumblr with Marco Arment, creating a platform that emphasizes easy content sharing across various media types, appealing particularly to a younger audience. The site quickly gained traction due to its user-friendly design and strong community features, leading to significant growth in users and unique visits by 2012. Under Karp's leadership, Tumblr was recognized for its innovation, earning him accolades such as being named one of MIT Technology Review's TR35 in 2010 and BusinessWeek's Best Young Tech Entrepreneur in 2009. Although he remained with Tumblr after its acquisition by Yahoo! in 2013, Karp stepped down as CEO in 2017. Outside of his professional life, Karp enjoys photography and exploring the city, distinguishing himself as a notable figure in the tech industry, particularly as a New Yorker in a field often centered in Silicon Valley.
Subject Terms
David Karp
Founder of Tumblr
- Born: July 6, 1986
- Place of Birth: New York, New York
Primary Company/Organization: Tumblr
Introduction
The founder of Tumblr and its chief executive officer (CEO) until 2017, David Karp was named one of the TR35 (“35 innovators under 35”) in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Technology Review's 2010 TR35 list when he was twenty-four years old.
Early Life
David Karp was born on July 6, 1986, in Manhattan's upper West Side, to parents Michael and Barbara (Ackerman) Karp. As a child, he attended the Calhoun School, a private school (preschool–twelfth grade), where his mother was a teacher. He also attended Bronx Science, the country's premier magnet science school, for one year of high school before dropping out in favor of homeschooling. As a teenager, he interned for Fred Seibert, owner of Frederator Studios, an animation studio responsible for a number of Nickelodeon cartoon series, such as The Fairly Oddparents. After he finished his homeschooling, Karp worked for the online parenting forum UrbanBaby as a software consultant in 2006. In November 2007, at the age of twenty-one, he launched the site Tumblr, subletting office space from Seibert.
Life's Work
Working with Marco Arment, a web developer who simultaneously developed Instapaper and later left Tumblr to work on it full time, Karp launched Tumblr in November 2007. The funding came principally from Karp's UrbanBaby job, with later contributions from venture capital investors (including UrbanBaby founder John Maloney). A microblogging site, Tumblr streamlined the blogging experience, letting users select a category of entry to post, including photos, text posts, videos, audio, and other categories. The site is streamlined to work with popular services like YouTube and Spotify, making it easy to post links to content on other sites. Unlike blogging platforms such as Blogger or Wordpress, Tumblr focuses on link sharing as its main purpose, making it a sort of hybrid between more personal blogs and social link-sharing services such as Digg. The social feature—a dashboard on which subscribed blogs appear—built a greater sense of community than on sites such as Blogger, where such features are optional but rarely focal.
Perhaps because of its simplicity, the site grew in popularity quickly, especially among young people (more than half of Tumblr's audience is under twenty-five). Tumblr launched an iPhone app in 2009, and more mobile apps followed, making it—like Twitter and Facebook—a part of the increasingly relevant mobile Internet. By 2012 the site had nearly 60 million Tumblrs and nearly as many unique hits per month. Because of its strong visual focus, many of the site's blogs are fashion-oriented.
Over the years, Karp added a small number of revenue-generating features to the free service. The “Radar” space on Tumblr dashboards serves as an advertising space for sponsored posts, with a minimum buy-in of $25,000. Karp was named Best Young Tech Entrepreneur by BusinessWeek in 2009. Though Karp remained even as Yahoo! bought Tumblr in 2013, he announced that he was stepping down from his position as CEO and leaving the company in late 2017.
Personal Life
Karp is an avid photographer. On weekends, he often takes road trips, renting cars from the Classic Car Club of Manhattan. He is notable as a New Yorker in a field long dominated by denizens of California's Silicon Valley.
Bibliography
Ehrlich, Brenna, and Andrea Bartz. Stuff Hipsters Hate. Berkeley: Ulysses, 2010. Print.
Jenkins, Aric. "David Karp Is Leaving Tumblr—Read His Retirement Letter Here." Fortune, 27 Nov. 2017, fortune.com/2017/11/27/tumblr-david-karp-leaving/. Accessed 6 Mar. 2024.
Jenkins, Henry. Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. Cambridge: MIT, 2009. Print.
Qualman, Erik. Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business. New York: Wiley, 2010. Print.
Welch, Liz. “The Way I Work: David Karp of Tumblr.” Inc. June 2011. Print.