Tumblr founder David Karp lashed out at Twitter at Cannes Lions yesterday, blasting the way it displays the number of followers for every tweeter as “really gross.”
“We don’t share stats, so your follower counts, your performance isn’t published out to the world," Karp said. "You can make little bets or try something small and experimental and not feel any sense of shame if you have only 2,000 followers, which I always think is really gross.”
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“Tumblr is not defined by the people you know, it’s defined by the stuff that you love,” he added.
Karp also took a swipe at those who post negative comments online, “We’ve taken a lot of care making Tumblr a positive environment, you don’t want people to be scared off by jerks ... It’s very hard when you have comments underneath every video on YouTube to keep the jerks out. It really sucks when you’ve poured your heart into something to be called ‘fat’ by jerks on the Internet ... [Tumblr] doesn’t allow for drive-by nastiness.”
Karp, 26, who sold his site to Yahoo! for $1.1 billion last month, said the site he’ll continue to run is a welcoming place where “an aspiring kid” can put up photos and creatives can place their award-winning campaigns.
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