Tumblr is betting big on going small

Finally, I felt like we need a space on the internet for creativity, art, and artists. The other social spaces on the internet have gone different directions. Twitter became a lot more about arguing, Instagram became about showing off, and Facebook became about weird people you went to school with saying weird things. Tumblr always had this frisson

With hindsight, I feel the reason Svpply never grew into anything substantial is because we misread the opportunity. Smallness was the steam that drove our engine and we opened the gasket.

The familiar social network pattern is to aspire to convert the whole world into a member.

We think there’s room for a different approach. A social netwo

Again, Tumblr’s biggest benefit right now is that it has no golden handcuffs. As we’re creating an advertising system, we can start a little bit from zero, so everything new is good. I can’t imagine the struggle of having billions of dollars of revenue and trying to shift your advertiser base or your policies.