Tumblr Launches

FEB 19 2007 · 12:00

Leslie Knope shrugs in Parks and Recreation, an archetypal Tumblr-era reaction GIF reblogged across every dashboard from 2010 onward Place: New York City Figures: David Karp, 20, founder · Marco Arment, lead developer Tumblr launches in February 2007. The product's defining feature is the reblog: any user can repost any other user's post to their own followers, with optional commentary, in one click. The format that benefits most from this mechanism, in 2007-2013, is the animated GIF. A photograph reblogs as itself; a GIF reblogs as the moment it captures, played again, on demand, on every reblogger's dashboard. Within five years the platform has 75 million blogs and serves animated GIFs at a scale no prior infrastructure has attempted. The GIF's bandwidth profile (small file, no plugin, loops forever) is the perfect fit for an infinite-scroll feed. Video: Founder Stories sit-down with David Karp, four years after Tumblr's February 2007 launch, on why standard blogging tools failed most people and what the dashboard was built to fix.