he idea had been brewing in David Karp's mind for a year or so Blogs were such an investment of time New blogs were being created every day but many were also abandoned quickly after The big blank text box was a little overwhelming to nonwriters How would they fill it every day What would they write about It was a commitment to maintain and update a blog Not everyone was up for that A shorter form of blogging would be better Karp thought And a flexible form with a simple sleek design would be even better one that could include a photo a video a chat a song or an audio clip or a short message What Karp was really thinking about was a tumblelog a type of short form blog that is much more than Twitter and far less than Facebook Karp had been inspired by a tumblelog called project ioni st It was a blog that was about sharing not publishing Its editors put up whatever they thought was cool a quote from Oscar Wilde a song by Nina Simone 7
a photograph of a sea creature by Paul Nicklen It was like an online scrapbook of what interested the editors the most Looking through it gave the reader a peek into the editors thoughts interests and experiences Little or no commentary was needed The only context was the author How absolutely beautiful Karp wrote Karp had been building his own tumblelog for six months He tweaked it and worked out the bugs And then he realized the blog tools he created wouldn't be that hard to make available for others to use So when there was a two week lull in Karp's Web consultant business in October 2006 he decided to go for it He would build a tumblelog that could be used by the masses It would
be just what he wanted in a tumblelog one spot on the Internet where people could post any type of media they wanted And maybe just maybe it would catch on with other tumbleloggers too He and developer Marco Arment Karp's business partner created the first version of Tumblr in those two weeks They launched their site in February 2007 showed it to the tumblelog community and had thirty thousand registered users overnight Two weeks later that number had grown to seventy five thousand and week after week it just kept growing The Coding Kid David Karp was born on July 6 1986 in New York City New York to parents Michael Karp and Barbara Ackerman His father is a well known music composer for television and film David's mother is a first grade science teacher at the progressive Calhoun School in Manhattan David has a younger brother Kevin who's a college student at the State University of New York SUNY at Stony Brook The two brothers grew up in the Upper West Side of Manhattan with their parents who later separated From the age of three David went to the Calhoun School where his mother taught He was a good student but did not excel in any particular subject He was always interested in technology though He was a child who even at a very young age knew what he wanted to be said David's mother He was very focused very driven
