Last night I made a post about tumblr’s poor handling of the pitchfork situation. I followed it up with a brief email to tumblr president, John Maloney, expressing my dismay at how the company was dealing with the community.
So this morning - to my surprise - I got a call from founder, David Karp. At first he seemed under the impression that I was rallying against tumblr on twitter or just had something against the service (apparently some others are actually up in arms rather than just voicing a civilized opinion), which I quickly clarified was not the case at all. I’m just another user who has been with tumblr for over two years, making personal posts and growing a music blog I care deeply about.
David quickly got to the issue at hand, and reassured me that Meaghan was not lying about what happened. The user who had the pitchfork URL was using a bogus email and that email about the domain never got to him, nor was there any legitimate content on that URL, nor anyone following said content. For all intents and purposes, this person was a squatter. He also explained that spam and domain squatting are two of the biggest problems tumblr faces, and that situations like this occur every week.
According to David, this user also knows the truth of the situation and is going out of their way to make a big deal out of losing the domain just to stir the pot. I explained to David that the decision to hand the domain over to a legitimate company seemed very rational to me and probably the right thing to do, and that I had never seen the blog so I could not comment if it was ever being used for legitimate purposes.
What didn’t make sense to me was the way that both Meaghan and Marc handled the situation, which in return led to a lot of disgruntled users yesterday (and likely still today). David admitted the situation could have been handled better, that Marc’s email to the user could have been better communicated (though Mark was not intimately familiar with the situation and just answering a support email), and that he just wanted the entire thing to quietly blow over.
Where I slightly disagreed with David is over how responses are handled. According to Karp, issuing a response on the staff tumblr would make this an even bigger deal, which the company wanted to avoid because of the lack of truth behind the user’s story. I maintained that by allowing an employee to post about a company matter on her own blog, it blew this thing up even further rather than addressing it through official channels. David disagreed, explaining that experience says that is not the case, and that small rebuttals from an employee in a low key fashion often put out these fires without further incident. That’s basically where we disagree. I think if this were any other type of company, not only would that be a bad move, but be completely unacceptable and probably in violation of a number of company policies. If anything, side rebuttals and attacks against users (likely in the wrong) don’t clear things up, they make the matter more gray for the entire community who can only base their opinions on what is publicly known.
However, what does clear things up is a willingness to communicate with your userbase. I was a little surprised that I received a personal call, and certainly appreciate that someone - not directly affected might I add - who voiced their opinion got a direct response from the top. That doesn’t mean I now agree with how things were handled, but it does mean that I feel my opinion has been heard, my advice on matters like these heeded, and that others in the community who share my perspective are being listened to.
In the end here, I think everyone agrees that this situation was poorly handled although the user in question is more likely than not looking for attention by lying about a number of key points. Tumblr is a small company with a young and inexperienced staff, but they’re trying their best to listen to their community, as they themselves are members of it too. While I may disagree with some of their decisions, I think it’s important to note that I don’t think they are purposely trying to screw anyone.
Just thought I’d share and say thanks to David for taking time out of his day to clear things up.
