WillHutson

UPDATE:  @newsycombinator is a bot - per their twitter accounts description, that said, I still feel the swipe is a little over the top for my taste.  

In defense of tumblr.

I don’t know what’s worse, the rampant disregard for courtesy with email communication (within the post), or y combinator putting a direct competitor of a company they’ve funded and work with (Posterous) in the cross hairs of a malicious post?

Some context:  I have friends at tumblr. I don’t know anyone at posterous. I really like and support a lot of what Y combinator does.

None of this excuses the link bait in question here.

The sub-heading alone should bury Zach’s argument:

“Over 40,000 followers and 4 years; I’ve had enough”

It isn’t enough that the service is free, but more over that he was able to build an audience of over 40,000 followers, from within the tumblr community! I’d argue that the overwhelming majority of these followers only blog within the confines of tumblr.  And yet issues, clearly tied to almost every single young company, seem to “plague” his experience so greatly that he had to leave the platform.

I call bogus.

Complaining about a free product is bad.  Complaining about a site that is growing faster (year over year) than every other blogging platform - is dumb.  Complaining aboutsomeone’s work and then including the emails exchanged between you both - is rude.  Y combinator sharing this is just odd - they should know better than to go after competing start ups.

Finally, it comes down to this: 

Can Zach honestly say that the downtime (which we all experience) outweighs the audience growth they’ve given you?