On February 19, 2007, the first version of the Tumblr microblogging service was founded by David Karp and Marco Arment.
They launched a more complete version in April 2007. Arment left Tumblr in 2010.
Here is an excerpt from David Karp’s February 19th Tumblr related post. (Surprisingly, it is on WordPress.)
Tumblr — something we’ve always wanted
Posted on February 19, 2007 | 20 CommentsMore than 100 million blogs will be online in 2007. The count continues to double every 5.5 months. About half of the blogs created are ever maintained after being created. And fewer than 15% of blogs are updated at least once a week. (Technorati)
….Yeah, it’s still a blog. But it’s a new philosophy. It’s free of noise, requirements, and commitments. And it’s finally here.
A post from 2008:
Don’t laugh at us
Posted on May 8, 2008 | 1 comment
Tumblr’s moving to Tumblr.
Excerpt from “Don’t laugh at us”:
Yes, it’s totally silly that one year after launching Tumblr, we’re moving the official Tumblr blog off of WordPress because it was too much work to update.
We want to spotlight all of the neat stuff happening on Tumblr. So today we’re announcing the official Tumblr tumblelog: staff.tumblr.com
There’s a lot we want to do here. In addition to showing off the new features we’re building, we’re dying to brag about everything we see you folks doing. To cover it all, we’re inviting some new members of the Tumblr family to contribute. Introductions to follow.
Thanks, everyone!
In this 2011 Fast Company interview David Karp talks about launching Tumblr:
In addition to its 2007 founding, another key event in the history of Tumblr was its sale to Yahoo! in 2013. Here is a note from Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer:
We’re excited to announce that our deal to acquire Tumblr has closed… it’s official!
As promised, Tumblr will continue to operate as a separate business, led by David Karp as CEO. Their product roadmap, their team, and tone will all remain the same as will their mission to empower creators and curators alike to do what they love best: create….
— “Tumblr. + Yahoo! — It’s Officially Official”
One more historic event: In 2014 the President of the United States and David Karp talked about how to pronounce the word GIF. (Visit the White House Tumblr for more information.)
