The New York Observer uncovers the truth about Tumblr founder David Karp. OMG! He's only 21! Great. He also dropped out of high school and never went to college. Instead, he kept the reasonably popular UrbanBaby site, later sold to CNET, running and eventually founded the very useful Tumblr. Which now has 170,000 members. That's tiny when compared to the giants of Silicon Valley, but that didn't seem to stop Karp from sniping the competition.

  • On Silicon Valley: "It's incredibly incestuous in Silicon Valley. It always turned me off. It's so hypercompetitive — that was always my perception, though I haven't actually had the experience."
  • On Digg: "For every decent link there are thousands that are just crappy, and you have to do this meaningless action of just clicking on a stupid button."
  • On YouTube and MySpace: "Right now, we're going after artists. Before that we were thinking students and young people, but it's much easier to target an adult who wants to express themselves online. Artists and producers have YouTube, and musicians are relegated to MySpace. They're the worst platforms."

Surprised by the usually amiable Karp's potshots? My guess is he learned from watching the best. Just today Apple CEO Steve Jobs laid into both Google and Amazon.com.