July 6: The Tumblr Millionaire

David Karp, creator and CEO of Tumblr, the popular blogging platform, was born in New York on this date in 1986. A dropout from Bronx High School of Science, he never earned his high school degree, but became a computer animator and software consultant in his early teens before launching Tumblr in 2007. As of July 1, 2014, Tumblr hosts over 192.9 million blogs. Yahoo acquired the company for $1.1 billion in May, 2013, with Karp remaining as CEO — an acquisition that probably saved his company, which, despite its popularity (it is the fourteenth-most-visited site in the U.S.), was burning cash and had only $16.6 million left in its accounts. “Tumblr’s appeal,” writes New York magazine, “can be summed up in one word, which is ‘easy.’ If you traveled back in time to 1996 and took a grandmother whose understanding of the web was AOL and wormholed her to 2013, she’d be able to create a Tumblr blog in less than three minutes with no direction.... Generating new blogs is so easy that Tumblr limits the number that users are allowed to create in a single day. (The limit is ten.)” “I don’t have any books. I don’t have many clothes. I’m always so surprised when people fill their homes up with stuff.” —David Karp