The design of Tumblr, the blogging tool and social network, is guided by feeling. In particular, the feelings of David Karp, the company’s 26-year-old founder
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“Pretty much every large tech company today,” Karp said, is essentially “metrics driven.” Google, Twitter, Facebook: they’re obsessed with “optimizing” services, design, functionality and aesthetics through constant testing and tweaking.
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Karp chose not to operate that way. Rather than monetizing clicks, he wants advertisers to view Tumblr as a place to promote particularly creative campaigns to an audience whose attention is worth paying for.
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Teens embracing new services say they’d rather use aliases than their real names.
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On Twitter or Tumblr, they say, they can also be more selective about what they share and with whom, and feel less social pressure to “friend” everyone in their school or friends of friends.
Twitter, they say, just feels more private and intimate. They can use pseudonyms or private locked accounts so their tweets stay between friends.
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“Teens need a place to socialize and express themselves without grown-ups staring at them.”
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From this interview, it’s clear that Tumblr practices “self design” or perhaps “genius design” rather than user centered design, and does not believe in “pave the cowpaths.”
Peter Vidani on the Evolution of the Tumblr Dashboard
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Another design goal for Tumblr is the idea of taking away the intimidation of blogging — you know, the dreaded confrontation of an empty page. This is achieved with with smaller text fields and even a range of non-text options. “We don’t want to make you feel like you need to write three paragraphs and post a photo,” he says. “You can just post a photo.
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When the site really took off was when the curators — people who primarily respond to other Tumblr users’ content by “reblogging” it on their own pages — came on board. Today, creators are probably 10 percent of Tumblr, and curators are 90 percent
— Tumblr’s Inflection Point Came When Curators Joined Creators
