that's sure to last. and you have every tax pay we are the i.r.s. there's no way the press and republican don't keep pulling those threads as long as they can. >> rose: we conclude with david karp, the 26-year-old founder of tumblr. >> there was a tool that i wanted to use that didn't exist and i found myself increasingly frustrated with the direction that the technology was going which was less and less creative. it was more and more restricted tools. where you put your photos in this directory and i wanted something where i could be free. where i could do anything. >> rose: jim vandehei, mike allen, david karp when we continue. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> we begin with a look at politics driving obama's second term. controversies in washington have renewed questions about leadership? both parties. it's increasingly uncertain whether the president can push through his agenda in a divided congress. joining me are two great reporters, jim vandehei is the executive editor and co-founder of politico. in 2009, "vanity fair" named him among the 100 most powerful thinkers of the information age. he's also the first person of a news organization -- of a primarily unlined news organization to serve at enterprise dot oog. mike allen is with plit politico i am pleased to have both of them at this table. welcome. good to have you. >> great to be here. >> let me start with one thing that you have started which is the idea -- we want to talk about what comes out of this. the idea of what you can report that goes to the heart of what's going on without being sort of q&a. >> we started a column "behind the curtain." and the idea was to deliver on the original idea of politico. jim and john harris pointed out reporters are more interesting in a bar than they are in the pain ere and the idea was to close that gap. behind that curtain column, we wanted to do that game theory for washington. how people get power, how they use it, how they squander it. >> rose: is that the essence of people who come to what politico is about? people interested in that question? >> i think there's -- >> rose: how do you use pewer? >> that goes to the core. but the things which politico is we obsess about everything, politics, policy, governance but we try to get at the convergence of those things. why do people do what they do? how do people do what they do in washington and ultimately why does it matter? i think one of the blessings we have is we've been covering this stuff for 20 years now. i myself worked on capitol hill, covered the white house, covered the presidency for a while. mike has done the same thing. you learn a lot. you observe a lot. you end up getting all these amazing sources. a lot of your conversations, if you're going to use the conventions of modern journalism well, do off quote that says that, do you use that on the record? it prevents you from telling people what's going on so we try to loosen up with the column and tell it like it is like we see it base odden the reporting and experience we have in town. >> rose: let me start with that and the president. where do you think the president is in his second term right now? because there was a column which got my attention that morning saying "d.c. turns on the president." >> the president is going to be surprised how lasting this is. the president at the moment thinks that his legacy is secure. he's been reelected. financial reform, health reform. but what we have with these scandals, why even though he thinks they're all bogus, a republican was pointing out to me that the three episodes now have something for everyone. you have the media who's upset about the subpoenas, you have what they call the tinfoil hat crowd-- that's a republican saying that-- has benghazi, that's about hillary clinton, that's about sure to last. and you have every tax pay we are the i.r.s. there's no way that both the press and republicans don't keep pulling those threads as long as they can. >> rose: so conventional wisdom is today that this will last throughout the second term and that perhaps with the exception of immigration reform there's no chance of getting anything. no grand bargain, nothing in terms of gun control, nothing else? >> well, the thing with all three controversies, the question is at none of this point -- none of them are directly linked to the president or his immediate staff. until that happens we're in ena holding period where republicans won't stop investigating. that will last a year or two. they can do a lot with hearings and stuff i think it's insulate add bit from that. the problem make is getting to is that you now have this opening. not just from republicans but the media and democrats to air the concerns that they've had with president obama that they've largely kept to themselves. >> rose: and what are those concerns? >> the biggest grib is that there's no communication. there's no relationship. that's not with republicans. no one expects them to be buddies and share a beer with most republicans in an authentic setting. they do expect him to be having conversations with the democrats that matter on capitol hill with the columnist ins in the media and there's always been a distance and it's just his personal style. >> rose: he doesn't like it. >> he doesn't like it. it's not his style. >> rose: isn't that -- before what he's doing now -- we'll put that into the context. isn't that too facile to say he doesn't like it? this is a wise man. he won the presidency. >> part of it is a function of how barack obama came up he was such an overnight success that he didn't have the infrastructure, the network that almost every politician has. so he didn't have the relationships with the reporters. he didn't have relationships with lieberman, with local polls, with state democratic committees. in d.c., he doesn't like it, has not particularly made an effort at it. we had an ambassador tell us at lunch that he had a great relationship with bush. the bush library called him up to write a check and he wrote a big check and he said "i know the di is going to come when i get a call for the obama library get a ca)(u&t for me because the is no relationship. >> and he didn't have those relationships because he didn't need them. he was bigger. it was one of the most amazing stories. >> rose: his narrative is overwhelming. >> his brand was larger than that and he knew that. he was a very self-confident guy and rightly so. he didn't feel like he needed to do all of that base work. and what happens is when the going gets rough, when it gets tough, that's when you need those relationships. you want to be able to have sort of that circle of trust with the folks on capitol hill and then that outside groups that are there for you to support even when times are difficult. and i think that's where the president finds himself. and if you're the president -- what he would say in private is that, listen, the system is not on the level. i have almost no capacity to really do anything with this congress. republicans are from venus, i'm from mars. the media plays up conflict. that's basically true. there isn't that much running for this president. he can be -- he could have the most intimate relationships with everybody who matters in the political ecosystem and he probably still wouldn't get that much more done just because of the dynamiceds of the modern congress. >> rose: because congress has changed. >> the modern congress is an extremely dysfunctional institution. that's where the president is spot on. >> rose: because they don't play by the old rules. >> they're just different. they don't even know each other. one of the congressmen was teld me the only time he sees republicans is at a book party. and there are natural ways to do it. >> rose: they don't stay around on the weekends. they go home. >> because now if you're seen as living in washington that becomes a weapon against you. so it used to be common. when i was an intern decades ago it used to be common that a congressman would have their kids in school in the d.c. area. they lived in d.c.. that's unheard of. >> rose: obama believes it's -- first of all, let's switch to boehner. boehner believes that's the new reality and there's nothing to be gained by grand bargain with obama. a, because of the constituency and, b, because he doesn't believe that the president is prepared to deal. >> we had an interview with speaker boehner before he left town on thursday and we came away realizing that he had given up on any activist approach to the job. the problem for him is he is he is a weak speaker. that's not his fault. the modern congress, the way it operates that mike was talking about, if you're a rank-and-file member of congress you don't care if you get leadership's endorsement, you don't care what committee assignments they give you. they can hurt you and you don't have earmarks any more. so all the tools you had as a leader to exercise power in washington, they're gone and so he's at the mercy of his members. it's not just a relationship thing. his members come from districts that are so radically different than a democratic district. much different than they were a decade ago. they have no desire to do anything the president would want to do. they are in different worlds when it comes to taxes, size of government, immigration, education, foreign policy, you name it. >> they don't want to do it and they don't want to give him a win. so between the two, almost no republican house memberer who's -- is from a district obama won so no incentive to play ball. >> rose: was where does the president go, then? what does the president do? because after having won reelection he said "elections matter." you know, he created the team to give him the benefit of a kind of grass-roots attack on issues. that's one thing he did. he began to stroke them and court some, both republicans and some members of his own party but it seems to have gone to naught. >> just as they tried to go around the media, president bush called it going around the filter. all presidents try to do it. he's tried to pass over the leadership of congress and correct directly with some of the members and the new white house chief of staff, dennis mcdonough has been central to that. he helped get that dinner going with the republican senators he's taken the democrats around town. jim was pointing out this isn't a partisan thing at all. democrats complain as much as anyone about the silence from this white house. democrats who could give them good advice, who've lived through what they're living through now say they never get a call or if they get called in to the white house if they do go in nobody ever asks them their opinion we hear about his visits with world leaders. the president's conversations with world leaders are not-- the key question for any good marriage-- "what do you think?" you don't find this president -- >> rose: or what's in it for you. none of them say that he was genuinely interested in listening to me and how i could maybe either help him with his issues or he could help me with mine. >> look at the notes on the world leader conversation and it's "i think, i know, i believe." >> rose: is that what they say? "i think, i know, i believe"? >> i have a friend whose mother says "people don't change, they just get more like themselves." i think president is making an effort but what's fascinating is people want a president who is going to reach out. a president who can break up washington. one of the fascinating parallels between bush and obama is it's one of the big reasons they both were elected. you've talked to him. the bush outreach demographic -- democrats in texas was very real. came to washington, made very little effort. one of the reasons so many of them. one of the reasons president obama was elected was because people thought he was different. >> rose: so what about this relationship? is it different than the previous administration. do they believe they did not need you like other administrations that believe the press was essential to convey their message? >> it it never a good relationship. so there's always significant mention that relationship. and it's not like we had a warm relationship with president bush. in the off-the-record conversations we had more reporters had better rapport with president bush than i would say think had with president obama president bush was a likable guy. president obama tends to keep more to himself. what's different they didn't need the media like they didn't need members of congress and because of technology they have so many tools and tricks to go around the media. the white house is the content creator. they're much more controlled in putting him throughout in improvisational settings where he had to take tough questions for reporters. george bush was criticize bud he put himself many in those settings more than president obama has. so the relationship is tense. there's no doubt there idea of using the justice department to go in and snoop on what reporters are doing has exacerbated things. >> "behind the curtain call" that got the most traffic, the most attention looked at the fact that there's been a real shift in the balance of power between press room and the west wing. we talked to people who worked in previous administrations with the new fragmented immediate yad that the old organizations don't have the cloud they did before and as a result there's clout for the west wing which, as jim said, is making videos, making >> and michael curry under clinton said "they get away with stuff i never dreamed of being able to get away with." >> rose: but there's also this. when politico first came out, i think it was the campaign manager, david plouffe who dropped it down on who dropped it down on david pfeiffer's desk and said "this is trouble." what did he see? >> i think to be blunt they would say it now. they would say it's trouble in that here's a group of reporters obsessed about politics. they're going to obsess about process. they're going play up the intrigue behind the scenes which only leads often to negative story lines. they don't want people playing up the conversations that are happening behind the scenes. they want to control the dialogue. control the debate so they can get the policies and the political results that they want slopgs you're doing your job and getting it right i think they're going to respect the work you're doing even if they don't like an individual column or piece. >> rose: let me talk about the controversy today. number one, leading to the question of whether republicans can overply their hand. >> they already have. >> rose: already have? tell me. >> well, republicans know they are the one person to mess this up. there's so much opportunity here. >> rose: leading up to 2014? >> yeah. and 2016. >> rose: any speculation of how the democrats could retake house in 2014? >> no. >> rose: no longer speculation? >> no. mathematically that probably just doesn't work. but they realize that they made a mistake secretary clinton came off looking like a winner in the benghazi hearings. >> rose: even the famous quote "what difference does it make" >> she wishes she hadn't. >> rose: that won't come back to haunt her? >> it will and they'll try to produce more and we're told her that the end game is to get her to testify again. the white house will fight it. they don't want her to have to testify at multiple committees. they don't want defense secretary gates to come back or panetta to come back. >> rose: because they all were recommending -- for example, in syria >> but to be clear for hillary clinton, you have to have evidence that she herself was personally involved in manipulating talking points or that she made bad decisions with incoming information that should have led her to a different decision that resulted in -- >> rose: she's taken full responsibility in terms that you might expect and secondly she said "we will implement all the recommend daxs of the commission." >> right. privately republicans say that benghazi probably wouldn't be an issue if it weren't for hillary clinton. unlike the i.r.s. >> rose: if it wasn't for her and 2016 this would not be an issue. is that what they're saying? >> even the white house will tell you it will never be resolved to anyone's satisfaction but there will be a real effort to make it last. and we're talking about three controversies. we should remember world history tells us that world events could change everything. somebody pointed out to me that if the boston marathon happened next week that would look different. >> rose: let's turn to the other controversy, the question about a.p. and fox in terms of literally that kind of snooping. what legs does that have? and do you expect that story to continue and to get deeper and we find more? >> yes, there's this meeting they've called in the bureau chiefs from the different publications in washington tomorrow to discuss this. >> rose: and what will they say? >>. >> i think they're trying to find a combination where they can set at least some loose ground rules about when and where the government can begin to do these investigations, where these leaks are coming from. i think most folks in government are saying these went probably too far. >> rose: is there something about this president, this former law professor that would believe that -- would err on the side of too much? >> if you think about it, we've now had back-to-back presidents that can put american lives at risk. they all can say that. is this president worse than president bush. we're told from the administration there's no moment that they said "okay, we're now going draw a red line on this." some of these investigations started under bush, they happened on different tracks but the white house, the attorney general we're told have seen now have seen how it looks and why there's a problem. that's why they're doing this listening tour over the next two days, three groups of people. tomorrow they have the print folks and over several weeks they'll bring in media executives, council, they've invited fox, by the way. but to let everybody feel heard and they say too draw a little clearer balance between the first amendment and law enforcement. it was just overlooked and neglected. >> rose: when they go about this and you look at the circumstances of this, is the attorney general going to survive? >> charlie, he'll stay as long as he wants to and the president likes having him there. >> rose: i think he likes him very much. >> he was one of the important reasons that he stayed that's often overlookd is he's part of the national security conversations, part of drones conversations. he's a liberal voice. the president likes having around that table. and that's why he'll be there for a while and no one wants to look run out and the president doesn't want to look like someone has been run out. and that's what i think buys him a little bit of an insurance policy. >> rose: how much of the -- this came up in peter baker's piece the idea that he might be bore. >> to go bore? to say what thinks. >> rose: are not that he would. he gives hints, i guess, at his frustration and what he would like to say. for example, "if i wouldn't be accused of class warfare i would say this." >> i think what he wants to say is that he thinks republicans are nuts. he think it is modern republican party is crazy and he thinks that it's not a fair critique of the media to take his decision and weigh it to theirs. he thinks their is is so irrelevant rational that -- he would say almost any issue he's willing to give but there's not any willingness to give on the republican party that could lead to compromise on any big issue that he would plausibly sell to the democratic party. again, there is -- in all of this stuff there's -- the modern republican party is so extremely conservative and has no incentive whatsoever to cut a deal with him on any issue other than immigration for political reasons. the question that is unknowable is had he handled things differently the first five years had he gotten relationings -- new hampshire is it is unknowable. he believes it would not have. >> he believes it would not have. otherwise he would have done it. >> rose: what's going to fix the country in terms of its economic well-being. is washington capable of doing it? >> in the short term it's not. every indication is that there will have to be a crisis and i ask when we do breakfasts almost every leader that i sit down with, i ask them what is going to be the turn? and it's not coming soon. >> i have faith in humanity and america. if you think about a lot of the most controversial figures who've gotten big platforms in politics, michele bachmann today announcing that she retired, herman cain, all the people who were the most bombastic voices on the right. they're gone. they have been discredited. the market does react. it takes a while. >> rose: let me spend a moment talking about what you guys do. are you guys sitting interpret any >> never sitting pretty. job someone to maintain the entrepreneurial startup metabolism. people make fun of me around the office. i will say the wolf is at the door but it's true the wolf is always at the door. that's why jim is up at 4:30 -- >> rose: they can e-mail me, i'm already up. (laughs) >> that's lunchtime for you! >> rose: so do you believe what my great friend and di grove said "only the paranoid survive?" >> that's a jim question. >> rose: why is that a jim question? (laughs) i just want an answer and he deflects. >> he's a great deflector. only the paranoid thrive. anyone who thinks they're sitting interpret city a sitting duck. >> rose: you can't take the world for grant bud the paranoid survive? the wolf is at the door? >> disruption. >> we've had -- we've watched the channel 4 news as our dad turned it on. now you don't get those automatic eye babbles. every morning politico has a chance to get an audience or lose an audience. if you're not serving someone on any specific day they'll go elsewhere. >> rose: great to see you. >> thank you, charlie. >> rose: back in a moment, stay with us. david karp will be here. he is a young man who sold his company, tumblr, to yahoo! for $1.1 billion but he's provided a way for people to have access to millions of other people. back in a moment. david karp. david is karp is the founder and c.e.o. of tumblr. in 2007 he started the company at age 20. it is now the preeminent blogging platform with over 300 million active users. "forbes" magazine noted facebook is the internet's phone book, twitter is its wire service and tumblr 26-year-old karp has built the canvas. yahoo! announced it would purchase tumblr for $1.1 billion. welcome. >> thank you so much for having me. excited to be here. >> rose: you had enough confidence to say i know what i want to do. i've had experience and this is what i want to do. i'll do home schooling and whatever but i want to do it now. you said to me your parents were enablers. >> yeah. i have a hard time taking too much credit for it. i had a lot of just dumb luck along the way and some incredibly enabling parents. parents who just supported me unconditionbly but also really -- >> rose: "if you want to do this david, we're behind you"? >> yes. and also kind of set me up. either pushed me or kind of set me up to find my way. so, like, the best example of that is back when i was -- growing up. anything, whether it was, like, an instrument i wanted to learn my dad would get me lessons. whether it was robots, i wanted to build robots he'd take the train to boston and we'd go to the m.i.t. robot competitions and i remember very vivendiedly the summer i turned 11 i found a.o.l., i found the internet, i found this whole world online and i wanted to figure out how to make it work. >> rose: when was that? >> i was 11 years old -- this would have been in '97. >> rose: that's about when it was happening. >> uh-huh. and the internet was an incredible place back then the internet was raw. and so as soon as my dad got a sense that i was curious he showed up with a stack of books this tall. every web development language he could find. >> rose: so you're self-taught writing code? >> you had to be back then. it wasn't in academia. that was the reason for me dropping out of school. it wasn't screw this, it wasn't that i was board. i was enjoying school. but back in' 9, certainly back in 2000 when i was in high school where i just moved up to high school there wasn't a computer science education in high schools in new york. and i had an opportunity to go and screw around with the technology that i was excited about. >> rose: it's really the same story in a way that bill gates had when he was in the first year at harvard you know? he realized the train was leaving the station and he needed to get on the train. so no matter what he thought of the harvard education he wanted to be there doing what he was doing. creating software. >> at that point he had a vision so it was early in my life when i didn't have a vision yet. i had direction. i knew i wanted to be messing around with technology and i think -- not to draw -- that's way too much of a comparison, i think. once i had a glimmer of division -- >> rose: what was the glimmer? >> there was something i wanted there was a tool that i wanted to use that didn't exist. and i found myself just increasingly frustrated with the direction that the technology was going which was less and less creative. it was more and more -- more about these restricted tools where you put your photos in this directory, you put your articles over here. i wanted something where i could be free, where i could do anything. >> rose: was that back when you were 13 and 14? >> no, that was back when i was 18, 19. so in 2005, 2006. >> rose: that's what separated tumblr is it gives you the capacity to be creative. >> that's it. hopefully it's an increasingly large, flexible, creative canvas for some of the most creative people in the world. >> rose: some of the most creative people in the world. a canvas for them do -- >> that's our submission to everyday find new ways to stretch that canvas and give people -- the most aspiring creators, the most talented creators more room to make their best work. just think about the role technology has played in enabling those most creative people and pushing art and media forward. look at what technology's done for film and something like pixar, right? i mean, that's an unbelievable thing that couldn't have existed before that technology. and that's -- that's the lineage -- >> rose: what exists because of tumblr? >> 105 million creators who have set up their homes on tumblr, more than 55 billion posts across a whole swath of genres of brilliantly talented illustrateors. people like robert reich publishes through tumblr. >> rose: so they're share their creative any >> sharing their work and wrather be constrained to square photos over here or 140 characters over here they can do all of it. >> rose: how much time was the idea between what that's what i can create and the ability to create that canvas? >> probably took me a few months and it was just working on my own blog. i was working on a little tool just for me and at some point it clicked like, you know, there might be other people out there who have the same frustrations that i do and when we watch the thing we found some of them. it wasn't like 100 million of them. it was like a few thousand of them that showed up and were just as excited as we were. and the few thousand turns into tens of thousands and in the first few months hundreds of thousands of creators who found a real home on tumblr. >> rose: how do you side their offers to buy this, now is the right time to sell? >> i was not expecting to sell the company this year. i certainly wasn't looking to sell the company. this was a really remarkable opportunity that presented itself. going back to how much dumb luck i've had in my career, in my life. this was an unbelievable opportunity to short cut a lot of the very hard things that we're about to be going through. not to say that we weren't excited about all of these next steps but this is a chance to join a company that has a history, a legacy and a huge amount of resources around business stuff. >> rose: and you've been associated with people that have done extraordinary things. >> absolutely. she's a visionary in this industry. one of the most capable leaders and executives. >> rose: did she have to sell you on it? >> she sold me on -- we knew. so we started conversations about working with yahoo! in november, i believe, of last year. so this is a conversation that's been going on for months. we knew after the first few conversations that we were excited about working together. we knew there was a lot we were going to do together regardless. >> rose: regardless? >> well, sorry, after a few months in those conversations we knew we were going to be working together. that's when marissa showed up and started to take me down, started to tell me -- walk me through the story of how we could do even more together. >> rose: rather than trying to do it on your own. >> it was what we, again, knew we were going to be doing stuff together. this was an opportunity to do even more to get even more invested with each others efforts. >> rose: why yahoo!? >> again, it's -- it was a company in a position and with the legacy -- a company with a legacy doing exactly same kind of stuff that we're hinging our business on. just really creative brand advertising they were the original digital media company. they took a very different approach to media, right? they approach media as abeditorial team that create content and build creative brand advertising on top of that content that's a big part of the future of tumblr's business creative band advertising. it's something they have advertiser relationships around they have huge resources behind that effort at yahoo! they're a place today-- yahoo! and marissa and her team today-- are looking for a future for yahoo! growth for that business. and that's where they saw huge opportunity in this media network that we were building and what marissa showed me, what their team showed us was an opportunity for yahoo! to help us fuel in a huge way the development of that network and the development of our ad business. >> rose: what will tumblr be like? >> hopefully we get this right tumblr will be a home to the most aspiring and talented creators all over the world. something we've already started to do. i want to see all of them, not just calling tumblr their home but truly proud of the stuff they're creating -- the stuff that they're making, the stuff that they're creating on tumblr. the consumer behavior, so what regular people out there in the world do, right now they spend a huge amount of time in front of their televisions consuming sort of -- what do you call it? sort of premium content, some would call it. stuff produced by publishers, networks, studios. if we're not already there today certainly five years from now i expect the vast majority of the content we enjoy not to be produced by a handful of creators that are selected and supported by those big studios. >> rose: what excites you the most? the building of the business or creating the product? >> we have this -- look, the product is why i got into this. i have to tell you that the business end of this has become such an interesting, exciting, fun challenge for us because we've got this thesis that we can build a business that not only does not compromise everything that is special about tumblr, makes it an incredible home for these talented people but actually makes tumblr a better place. in the same way that if you ripped all the ads out of vogue it would be half the magazine but, two, it would lose great content. the way we've approached advertising doesn't look anything like advertising across the rest of the internet today. so much of -- there's a lot of nuance here, but -- >> rose: explain to me because it's the essence of what you're trying to do. >> we've gotten so used to advertising that something that pulls you over when you're in this mode to, like, buy an ipod and buy it from best buy rather than over here. it's something people in silicon valley call harvesting intent. to take somebody looking for something and go send them do it over here and convert as quickly as possible. what advertising in media used to be was story telling. something that used to get you aspire to a life-style. something that got me as a kid growing up in manhattan, somebody who should never have any reason to want a car, but those b.m.w. ads and cars screaming around those curvey roads on that mountain made me aspire to want a car. and when i turned 18-- you have to be 18 in new york city to get your driver's license, or to drive anyway. >> rose: 16 in north carolina. >> it killed me growing up. it made me go out and get a car when i turned 18. >> rose: so ads create desire? >> they create intent and so much of what the web has spent time -- or i should say what the big networks on the internet in the last decade have spent time focusing on is something google pioneereded and proved could be a huge, huge business but it's focused on once you've already got their interest getting you to make the purchase. there's a whole other world of brand advertising that gets you to aspire to a life-style. it's why people got into the add industry. they got in with "mad men" aspirations, right? they want to write the hook, write the jhing that will makes you go "yeah, i should -- i want to go finance a little coup that i blaze around in on the weekends." that's what great advertising does and the gróx÷ thing about great advertising is it can be great. >> rose: do you think you've led a normal life? >> it seems pretty unusual. >> rose: have you missed what college gives you beyond education and the diploma. it gives you an opportunity to associate with peers in an interesting way, learn things that have been part of the history of civilization, that kind of thing? >> absolutely. don't quiz me on history, for one. but, no, i am certainly not nearly as intelligent or capable as many of my friends that went through academia. there's a lot that i missed out on there. but what i gained -- >> rose: but you dilled down deeply on one thing? >> i'd say it's the opposite. i've gotten a good general experience and got acclimated to going out into the world working with adults from a pretty young age. just the fact that i got my first job as soon as i got my working papers when i was 14 i was like, working retail in new york city selling computer wires just like around older people, having to figure out how to interact with older people. >> rose: that's the remarkable thing about your story that we started with this and your parents were enablers. it is this sort of sense of being willing to go out on your own and be your own creator about your life. and not worry about form of fashion or anything else. just simply being in love with ideas. >> it's not something i take for granted. it's been a privilege to work on so many things that have been so close to my heart. it's been awesome. >> rose: what do you worry about? what could screw it up? >> as i mentioned, the stakes are as high as they've ever been. today a hiccup could be real money. it could affect a lot of brilliant creators. when we would have something -- you know, you hear about infrastructure issues and growing pains that things like twitter and tumblr go through, that hypergrowth mode and are trying as hard as they can to keep up with all of this new traffic, all of this new use that they're seeing, any time we have, like, a blip there, any time we've -- the site's gone down, pages weren't accessible those are people -- people aren't able to share photos for a second, you can't check your e-mail for a few minutes. that's people's work that they poured their heart and souls into. put a tremendous amount of effort and energy into and another human who is going to find that, going to get to see that and enjoy it and make some connection to this creator and maybe be a fan of them for the rest of their life. >> rose: and they could play a role in with what they're creating. >> absolutely. the idea that we ever prevent that from happening, that we ever screw that up, the idea that we ever let down that creative community is horrifying to us. heart breaking any time it's happened. so that's still -- one of those things is just making sure we do everything we can to serve that creative community. that's why we're here. >> rose: does the nature of the content bother you at all? what people are creating? regardless of what it might be? and how do you guard against that if you do? >> you know, it has at times. >> rose: say, pornography. on the other hand you could say something more -- >> yeah, the stuff that's -- the first point is that it's been refreshing to see how much of the use of tumblr generally reflects the kinds of things that we really do hold dear. the things we do appreciate. at lot of aspirational and talented people making great stuff on tumblr. as a proportion of the network that is the vast, vast, vast majority of the stuff that's there and the stuff that bothers us we've done a pretty good job of actually defining policies around. as an example the stuff that was harmful to kids. there's all sorts of stuff that you deal with when you're a network like this. >> rose: how do you deal with it? >> lots of different ways. there's a whole lot of nuance to it. there's some automated flagging. there's some machine learning, some human moderation, some community driven moderation. we've taken some things incredibly seriously and worked hard to get smart about. >> rose: where do you think the biggest decision will come from? >> certainly in the short term it will be advertising. it's very native advertising. so tupl sbler made up of 105 million blogs that people spend 24 billion minutes a month on tumblr enjoying. sitting there getting refreshed looking at the latest greatest stuff being made by this incredible community of hundreds of millions of creators. the advertisements fit into spots where we already promote content. so we promote the best of tumblr and use that as a place for people to discover things that they wouldn't have seen otherwise. and we basically roll in advertiser content into spots where we promote organic content. >> rose: who was fred sievert? >> fred was, is, my main mentor, a guy who's been a huge part of my life and gave me my first job programming eni was 15. >> rose: so he's probably the most influential person around in terms of -- >> i think so. this guy started in the music industry, ended up as president of hannah barbera, was the original creative director for mtv. incredibly talented media mind. it's just incredibly useful to me to have my closest mentor be somebody out of the media world, out of the arts. >> rather than technology. >> rose: exactly. >> rose: he said you could see the future in terms of technology and how people interact in the modern world. >> i think i've always built things for myself first. the fact that tumblr started very selfishly as something just for me and for years was really just tiny little small team where i was constantly pushing fe features and capabilities that i wanted for me. that i wanted to use. and there's one defining threat in tumblr's culture, our company's d.n.a. that we've managed to assemble this really uniquely -- it's hard to see unless you've really spent time in the tech economy. we felt this uniquely creative team of engineers. a high concentration of people who might band our writing, our taking brilliant photos of in a brilliant photographers. standup comedians. we've got and incredibly creative team building tools for creators. >> rose: exactly. if you're the creator you have more appreciation and understanding for the need for the tools you could be better at. >> it helps us push tools further. it sets us up to -- we wake up everyday knowing that the most exciting stuff on tumblr isn't coming out of our -- the walls of the office down on 21st street, our headquarters, it's going to come out of this community, this army of -- >> rose: global community. >> all over the world, yes. >> rose: all over the world. in a sense -- and they're speaking to each other. here's the other interesting thing. when somebody gets perhaps the kind of explosive growth that you have had and then you see this deal with yahoo!, sometimes users say, wait, this is getting to something. do you get any of that? in other words, users are saying "i worry about this. i worry that this may change tumblr in a way that concerns me." >> yeah. they have every right to be concerned. >> rose: what are their concerns, is my question? >> what are their concerns? >> rose: yeah. >> you know, i think we've sort of seen this story play out in one of a few different ways. one of the ways it unfortunately plays out sometimes is this thing that was special, had its own unique characteristic, its own d.n.a. gets absorbed or assembly assimilated into some portfolio of some company where it's never the same after that. it loses all those characteristics that made it special and magical. and, look, that's why i really worked hard on those words to our community. >> rose: what's a day for you? >> these days it's a little bit different. i still kind of keep track because it was a very -- this was a moment for me. i had a lot -- i had a big part in actually building tumblr and writing a whole lot of the code and helping design a whole lot of the interface and the way it works. but i haven't committed code in about 16 months so i'm a little bit -- i'm fairly more hands-off than i used to be. and as that's changed there was a moment where it was awkward to me where i felt like all of a sudden it was no longer mine, that this big team had come in and taken over but i realized, one, what an incredible privilege it was to get to work with engineers and just people that were so much more talented than i am. and, two, i just -- i realized that we were able to accomplish so much more, put so much more stuff out there in into a world that we were really, truly proud of than we were able to when we were that tiny little team and i was incredibly proud of the stuff that i had a hand in building but today the stuff that our team is putting out into the world, it's extraordinary. it's a privilege to work with them. and it is -- it's just -- it's an amazing feeling to be so proud of so much of what these guys are doing everyday. >> rose: tell me what your snapshot is of where the world is in terms of social media and taking into consideration facebook, twitter, instagram, tumblr. because there are those who are now writing because of your success and others, you know, that the world is now moving away from facebook and to this place that offers a home to do things beyond exchange pictures -- first people complained about that would be facebook if i said it that way but go ahead, you know the question. >> sure, yeah. the first thing i would point out is that we're decidedly not social and we've tried very hard to draw those lines and build those distinctions. tumblr is about -- people come to tumblr for the stuff that they love. for art and media that they enjoy where you show up on facebook, you show up on instagram, twitter, a lot of these social networks for the people that you care about. if the people you cared about weren't there, facebook would be a lot less interesting. tumblr it's actually not -- it's not so unusual but it's also not the norm to go on tumblr for the things that your friends are creating. generally you go on there for this awesome stuff. this awesome art and media and whatever genre is near and dear to you is being created by these independent creators all over the world. it's not about a personal connection so much as it is a connection to -- >> rose: it's not about their work, it's about what they create. >> that's right. so, you know, i think to talk about just the social tools for a moment, i don't know. that's not really my jam and not something i think terribly hard about. i will say it's been remarkable to watch how quickly those networks move and are changing. i think we used to think of social networks as these big impenetrable networks and we've watched them build up and then erode over and over again in a faster succession. so i think it's going to be very interesting to watch how these big networks where we extend our relationships with other humans is how those move around. whether or not that starts to stabilize. i don't think it will. >> rose: in fact, one of them was yahoo! not social media but a big company -- >> i think yahoo! is a good example of just media. tumblr is media. people come here for art and media that they enjoy. it's why people go to yahoo! and one of the things that's made it's a resilient network. if you like your movie trailers, your news, the editorial on yahoo! it's there. you keep showing up and enjoying it. us it's not -- one of the sort of incredible things about social networks is how quickly they can be built up. they have the viral co-efficient that allows them to just explode overnight and all of a sudden you have vine or what's app or instagram, these things that all of a sudden you have tens of millions of people that are using and interconnected. at the same time, though, once a few of your friend start to leave and spend time somewhere else all of a sudden the whole network -- there's great content over here whether it's a t.v. network or a web site or a big network like tumblr. if there's something there that you care about, some thing, some stuff, you can keep going whether or not your friends are still using it, right? you can still show up and enjoy that stuff regardless. that's where i think media tends to be more resilient than social. at least in terms of internet efforts. so we'll see. i don't know. >> rose: it's great to have you here, david. it's a pleasure to have you at this table. david karp, tumblr. you'll hear a lot about him. thank you for joining us. see you next t captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh 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