RICHMOND, VA—
Tumblrs were shoulder-to-shoulder inside the Cous Cous restaurant in Richmond to share ideas with each other and the founder of the popular, Richmond-based blogging site, Tumblr.“I think the big difference from all of these big networks right now is it’s really about creative expression,” said Tumblr founder David Karp.
The name comes from a type of creative blogging. It’s just four years old, but the platform is already up to about 17 million blogs, making it the 28th largest site in the U.S.
It’s a rapidly evolving platform, more built for philosophizing than socializing. It’s superfast and mobile – many upload and watch via their phones - and is designed to personalized and shared.
Tumblr is more new media than social networking. Many news organizations, such as Newsweek and the Washington Post, have self-customized Tumblr sites. One local woman is sharing her kidney transplant adventures.
“Where Twitter is very much about communication and status,” Karp said, “and Facebook is about profiles and networking, Tumblr is really a place where people go to share the thing they really care about. It could be the stuff they’re creating, the trips that they’re taking, the articles they’re reading that are really moving them inspiring them.”
Unlike Twitter (which is sort of a modern day haiku, limited to 140 characters), Tumblr platforms display photos, videos, graphics as well as text.
He said they settled in the Richmond area because they found it a great match with the designers working on the site. They’re up to 30 employees here and in their primary headquarters in New York City.
Word of the encounter at Cous Cous was spread on the Meetup message board. “All of our meetups are just a chance to hang out with the people who are doing the most impressive stuff with all the stuff we’re building,” Karp said.
Maria Applegate, a local tumblr, finds the site much less restricting and more tailored to her needs than Facebook.
“It’s very much new age and Web 2.0,” she said. “I can do pictures, video, images, words. It’s kind of a smorgasbord of everything I want on it, as well as incoming content that I can decide what to look at.”
Even though Karp is becoming one of the key brokers in the information age, he sipped beer, swapped ideas and socialized as if he was a college student.
He said the site depends on the personal involvement of those who use it.
