Whiter Than Your iPod.

As someone who has known David Karp for a long time now (12 years), I am pleased as hell that he is getting all the press in the world today for the Yahoo! sale.

(Full disclosure: I worked for Tumblr in 2008, and turned down a fulltime gig to work on a little show called Project Runway.)

Although this Daily News cover is super awesomely bad, the depiction of David as being some lucky high school dropout nerd who struck rich today is asshattery. David is one of the smartest people I’ve ever worked with and for, and aligns himself with other smart people to help create awesome things. Period.

To also say he’s “sold out” today is equally silly. At 14, he had the work ethic of a seasoned veteran. At 26, you may as well call him Old Man Tumblr.

So, congrats again, David. And FUCK YEAH, Tumblr.

New York Magazine

marissamayr:

I’m delighted to announce that we’ve reached an agreement to acquire Tumblr!

We promise not to screw it up. Tumblr is incredibly special and has a great thing going. We will operate Tumblr independently. David Karp will remain CEO. The product roadmap, their team, their wit and irreverence will all remain the same as will their mission to empower creators to make their best work and get it in front of the audience they deserve. Yahoo! will help Tumblr get even better, faster.

Tumblr has built an amazing place to follow the world’s creators. From art to architecture, fashion to food, Tumblr hosts 105 million different blogs. With more than 300 million monthly unique visitors and 120,000 signups every day, Tumblr is one of thefastest-growing media networks in the world. Tumblr sees 900 posts per second (!) and 24 billion minutes spent onsite each month. On mobile, more than half of Tumblr’s users are using the mobile app, and those users do an average of 7 sessions per day. Tumblr’s tremendous popularity and engagement among creators, curators and audiences of all ages brings a significant new community of users to the Yahoo! network. The combination of Tumblr+Yahoo! could grow Yahoo!’s audience by 50% to more than a billion monthly visitors, and could grow traffic by approximately 20%.

In terms of working together, Tumblr can deploy Yahoo!’s personalization technology and search infrastructure to help its users discover creators, bloggers, and content they’ll love. In turn, Tumblr brings 50 billion blog posts (and 75 million more arriving each day) to Yahoo!’s media network and search experiences. The two companies will also work together to create advertising opportunities that are seamless and enhance user experience.

As I’ve said before, companies are all about people. Getting to know the Tumblr team has been really amazing. I’ve long held the view that in all things art and design, you can feel the spirit and demeanor of those who create them. That’s why it was no surprise to me that David Karp is one of the nicest, most empathetic people I’ve ever met. He’s also one of the most perceptive, capable entrepreneurs I’ve worked with. His respect for Tumblr’s community of creators is awesome, and I’m absolutely delighted to have him and his entire team join Yahoo!.

Both Tumblr and Yahoo! share a vision to make the Internet the ultimate creative canvas by focusing on users, design — and building experiences that delight and inspire the world every day.

http://yahoo.tumblr.com/

In case David’s inbox is more flooded than his dashboard feed:

Karp,

So proud of your accomplishments. What a huge day for you and your team. Continue to kick ass, take names, and make gifs.

-Caitlin.