1. “Tumblr, the lightweight blogging company, has raised between $25 million and $30 million in new VC funding, Fortune has learned. The valuation is in the ballpark of $135 million.” (via fortune.com, November 19, 2010)
2. See #1, above.

$135 million can buy a lot of great hardware, but more importantly, it can pay a lot of very talented and hardworking humans to maintain and improve that hardware and the blogging platform that relies on it.

The bottom line is that Tumblr has the cash on hand to prevent outages like we saw yesterday, and it’s relatively irresponsible to not put it to good use.  If you think Tumblr is taking a beating from its users today, just imagine what it’s investors are saying.

(From a personal standpoint, I’m just peeved at the terrible communication and the faux-apologetic nature of their response.  The “We’ll be back shortly” message could have been replaced with some sort of text explaining the status and/or progress, not to mention that their twitter feed was woefully underutilized.  As I’ve mentioned before, comparisons can be drawn to Twitter outages, which are always honestly described, frequently updated, and rarely include apologies.)

joeschmitt:

steelopus:

Steve Jobs is right that Apple Inc. doesn’t need to apologize to its investors, and I hope he doesn’t take shit for saying that.

I’m an investor.  I purchased a number of shares with confidence in the knowledge that Apple continually trends upwards because they continually release incredible products.

You know who needs to apologize to investors? Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns, AIG, etc.  They swindled billions of dollars away from their investors, and then did it again to the American tax payers.

Apple releases arguably the greatest smartphone ever developed and you’re asking them to apologize to investors?  You’re a goddamn moron.  You need to apologize to the world for being so mind-numbingly stupid.

I agree with your investment bank premise, but not the Apple part. Yes, they do release great stuff and trend upwards. But knowingly releasing a product that may need to be recalled, or that fails basic usability? Everyone needs to be called out on that shit. even them. If Microsoft or Blackberry or Motorola were caught doing that, you think Steve Jobs would say caveat emptor? I doubt it.

Apple didn’t release a product that may need to be recalled nor a product that fails basic usability.  Since when does .55% of total support calls relating to any specific problem equate to a failure of basic usability?

Calling out Apple on a product flaw is one thing, but suggesting that the company needs to apologize to investors over an issue that has been blown out of proportion simply because the media loves to drag high-profile companies across the coals is something completely different.  If you buy and sell stocks you’d better be damn well prepared for ups and downs, especially with a company like Apple that has had a target on it’s back for years, simply because they are so much better than their competition.

Steve Jobs is right that Apple Inc. doesn’t need to apologize to its investors, and I hope he doesn’t take shit for saying that.

I’m an investor.  I purchased a number of shares with confidence in the knowledge that Apple continually trends upwards because they continually release incredible products.

You know who needs to apologize to investors? Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns, AIG, etc.  They swindled billions of dollars away from their investors, and then did it again to the American tax payers.

Apple releases arguably the greatest smartphone ever developed and you’re asking them to apologize to investors?  You’re a goddamn moron.  You need to apologize to the world for being so mind-numbingly stupid.