 Speaking of fascinating interesting dudes. I want to bring out our next guest. He's a really smart very creative guy and Frankly, I'm a little bit in love with him. Please welcome welcome Marco Arment It works right, thank you. Thank you Yes, nice we're like we're stepping up the nerdiness We're going that we're going yeah, we're getting increasingly nerdy at the end of the show. We're just gonna be sitting here coding Is that cool? Well as long as you put two big top windows on the screen and one red one green Now two inside baseball. All right Is that a coding thing? I'm confused to some people. I'm totally confused right now So Marco, we're just gonna pretend that ever happened. I didn't get confused by that joke. We're just moving right along here Marco you're an interesting man. You are one of the people who created tumblr. Yeah Which as I said, we've all used Many many times multiple times a day Tell your bosses I'm sorry And an instant paper, which now everybody it probably says Instagram to you every time they talk about it, right? They're like you created Instagram. That's awesome How does it feel to have a billion dollars? Yeah, I Can you we buy actually I heard a few of those. Yeah, that was an interesting day. So I'm sure you did congrats so tell me I want to have a tumblr a little bit. I mean tumblr has become a Phenomenon, I mean everybody uses it like every new site. I see is just a tumblr site and and obviously it's been great for the porn industry No, I'm sorry. It hasn't been But for porn users, but but where when did that start? How did that start? What was your role? Just can you give me like a little bit of background? Sure. Spice it up sexy sexy stuff As sexy as two guys writing code in an office for a couple years. That's very sad That's very sad. I don't know why I'm so focused on sex right now. I just asked a little bit in love with you It is late at night, you know, that's true So yeah, so what where did how did that start? It started as me and David Karp David had a consulting company just making websites for people and One day we were between clients for about two weeks and he said hey, I've had this idea. I want to work on it Let's see what we can get done in the next two weeks before we got to do this next project and that was tumblr and that was late 2006 and we built the prototype and It took off we kept iterating on it as we were doing client work until eventually the client work had to be dropped because We had to do this thing full-time. Yeah tumblr work. Yeah, so so what was the idea was like I Mean, it's like this weird halfway place between WordPress and Twitter You know, it's this kind of like was the idea like blogging is just too complicated That was basically it was that a lot of us especially if you were a nerd playing with the internet in 2006 Chances are you had started and abandoned a blog. I Have several right a lot of people did yeah, and the problem is that the at the time What was really the traditional way of doing it was you had to do it in a way that was What was really the traditional? WordPress movable type style format is more like a magazine column where it's a lot of work You know writing these longer pieces lots of paragraphs and throwing in images and stuff every day or once a week At least you got to you got to do this as you know, it takes a lot of time Yes And very time-consuming and and if you're doing it as just like a little side hobby and you only get like one or two Comments in a week and one of them spam and the other one's telling you that you know, you're stupid It's kind of hard to keep the motivation going to keep something like that up. So tumblr was created to to lower the the friction to make Publishing online easy and to lower the expectation that you had to produce this giant magazine column every day because in reality most people just wouldn't and they would abandon it and With tumblr that wasn't really an issue because what the platform Cultivated and expected was much more sustainable because it was so much easier, right? Did you did you think that I know maybe I don't know the answer to this But did you think it would become this? This kind of default almost I mean that's what it's become really when now when people start something I mean, it feels like they've moved away from like oh, I'm gonna start a wordpress blog, too I'm just gonna start a tumblr and I like I have seven tumblers And they're all like I one day I was like, I'm gonna do a tumblr just of pictures of bags. I like why not cool, right? And I just started it. I did one. I was gonna film trailer reviews. I was just gonna do film trailer reviews That's good. I did like six and now it's abandoned but it but tumblr makes it so it's so easy Did you expect it would be this default or were you like? Well, there's been easier way to do a blog I knew that you know once we had the product at a usable stage pretty early on I knew that people who used it were going to love it But I think what surprised me is how much it took over Outside of people who used to be the ones blogging, you know back people who were blogging the most mostly nerds You know now it's a lot more people. It's like normals. It's everybody Nobody here Maybe somebody who wandered in by accident maybe they have a tumblr though. We can agree or or seven of them Yes, that's right. And one is about one is about bags So so you you stopped working at tumblr when? 2010 end of 2010 so pretty recently. Yeah, and and So talk to me about insta paper. This is your next big sure project What why did you where did insta paper come from and how was it were you sitting there one day? You don't you were like bookmarking something you're like, there's got to be a better way to do this Basically, yeah, I mean what happened was in in late 2007 I got an iPhone and I was still working at tumblr and I was commuting every day on the train Not the subway, you know the suburb train, you know Nobody here knows about an actual train an actual train the the LIRR or the Metro North Metro North Which leads up to what most people consider a farmland upstate even though it's like 10 miles you live on a farm Pretty much. No, okay But everyone thinks I do we'll keep that up. Yeah so, you know, I had this long train commute and I I would be browsing the web at work like I wasn't supposed to be Doing but when you're making a platform about browsing the web, it's really hard not to while you're testing it So I was browsing the web at work and I would find links to read and I wouldn't have time to read them Cuz I was supposed to be working So I would want to save them and read them sometime And at the same time I was on the train and I had this new iPhone that had this terrible edge connection and was offline half the time for the ride and I wanted to read things on the train but by the time I got there the connection was too slow to browse much to browse around and I would have already gone through RSS feeds dig which at the time still mattered. You know, I would have gone through all these things and So it was like I was burning through my queue when I couldn't read it and when I could read it There was nothing there So I made Instapaper to bridge that gap to solve that problem to be just a temporary place just the one-click bookmark Just save it. I don't want to tag it. I don't want to like Categorize it and reference this forever in a giant, you know library of things I've ever read It was just a temporary like I haven't read this but I want to yeah save it until I have read it and then get rid Of it. Do you feel it's the highest form of flattery that that Apple has completely ripped you off? Oh, yeah I mean is that it does that weird for you? I'd be really upset if I read because you're you know, just a guy Yeah, the guy living on a farm, right and here comes big bad Apple and they're just like, oh, hey We're gonna make this other thing that does exactly what Instapaper does that's gonna be default in all of our browsers Well, it helped a lot that they really did kind of a half-baked job of it Really? That's interesting. Do you think they did a half-baked job? I mean the first version had pretty much the first version was basically a bookmark folder, right? So, you know now and they're adding offline support and mountain lion, although I'm not supposed to know that But I'm not officially a Mac developer. So I'm allowed to tell you that You're not a you're not a Mac developer, right? Right. I actually haven't seen mountain lion. You probably have seen more but I don't know anything about it Of course, but it's but you're but you're telling me that They're adding offline. Yeah, that's somebody on Twitter told me they were adding offline. I assume I assume they're right That's good. Well people on the internet are always right. Sure. Sure. I'm sure of course they do like Wikipedia always right? Uh-huh. Always right always. Yeah. Yeah, but no it seems crazy to me. Has it has it hurt has it hurt business? It's hard to tell my business is fine It would that would feature was released a year ago the main reading list feature and then you know We'll see this summer when they release the offline version of it. It's hard to tell I mean the reality is that's only useful if you use Safari everywhere, right and only about a third of my customers do well You're using mobile every season mobile Safari, right? But I think that the desktop syncing part is very important There are a lot of people who both get and save the links on their iOS devices, right? But there's also a lot who were doing what the way I originally made it which was you save it on a computer and then You go read on your devices later, right? So so On the topic of Instapaper, there's been a lot of controversy about your If I want to call it allegiance to iOS, but you you have not You won't make an Android application, let me just say I'm gonna say it bluntly Yeah, and you even you even had this like challenge which was if somebody makes I want to make sure I get this right It's so misunderstood if somebody makes a good Android Instapaper client You'll call it Instapaper for Android and you'll split the profits close It was if that one developer that I was linking to made it It wasn't it wasn't intended to be an open challenge because I don't like it You know the challenge in the work in the Instapaper of course for Android in the design world Spec work is considered a very bad word, which is the idea I'm sorry designs. I'm getting this wrong. The idea is like you kind of put out a call Hey everyone do something, you know work for free And if we like your thing, we'll pick it and we'll pay you You have a whole week people working for free and most of them just get nothing out of it I didn't want to do that that that's why I didn't intend for it to be like a hey Everyone try and just whoever gets there first wins it, you know, cuz I don't want people to waste all their time. So This guy didn't do it. I guess. Yeah, it didn't happen. What about anybody else? Have you looked? Yeah, why don't you want to just make why don't you just make something for Android? I mean it is so I feel it is it is in the market in a big way, right? That's agreed I totally like literally half of smartphone. So are blackberries. Yeah, so come on. I mean don't let's not be Don't give me that straw man argument. Of course. I mean it's a real platform. It is a real platform and it's big No question, but the thing is, you know if you are in the business of Trying to get as many users as possible Something like Instagram that actually makes sense to spread to Android get as many users as you can. Usually it's for free Some kind of free service that makes sense tumblr has to have an Android app totally makes sense But when you're in the business of selling the app the majority of its papers revenue comes from the app sales So I'm selling a five dollar app on iOS. That's pretty expensive on Android. That's probably impossible And I don't I buy Android apps all the time and everyone's just like you well, I Mean there there are people buying Android app. Okay, I mean there are more developers making apps ranch I'm sure somewhere no, I mean there are no there definitely are I've tell you I see I know people with Android phones that buy apps, of course, okay, I do Yeah, you know a person but you think that all the other people who are one guy don't write for the verge Right are like no way. I don't need well, it's not all of them It's a question of really just economics and how to allocate limited resources, which is The most limited resource that I have right now is my time and that's everyone's most limited resource You know you I only have this one awesome version of the app that I'm really focused on if I were to take time off and either Either either do an Android app myself or pay someone else a whole bunch of money to do it That would significantly detract from my ability to make the iOS app great and now in the face of ever increasing competition I can't afford to let up I have to keep making the iOS app awesome. I mean you're competing with Apple So you can't really screw I'm competing with everyone who doesn't charge any money, right? And pocket and what do you read ability? Yeah, Evernote clearly spool. What do you think graves balloon thing? And which one which one do you like the best out of all of your competition? Honestly, I've seen very few of them. You might want to check them out. Yeah, I Tell you something. I mean it all seriousness. I've talked to people in our industry There are other people that like yeah, I don't really check out the competition John Rubenstein from Palm famously was like yeah, I haven't really seen an iPhone. Well that went well Yeah, how that happened so my suggestion this is my from one man. That's a friend. Yeah, I've seen the big ones Okay, there's a whole bunch of little ones I've seen the big ones and are you are you gonna add do you think you're gonna add features or try to compete on any? Of the stuff like pocket does a bunch of stuff that in spaper doesn't I mean it does some things on a bun It does more things that it does no, I you know, I I highly value originality and We have to just we have to distinguish there was that awesome HP envy whatever that came out, you know, we have to distinguish between You say HP envy whatever the you know, the computer look exactly like a MacBook. Yeah that thing Yeah, that's the HP MacBook air You know, we we have to distinguish with originality You know the the problem of simultaneous invention versus true originality now You know, I I want to be the original in many ways of what in paper does it is the original and I I like Apple products because many of them are very original not all of course, but many and You know, I value that a lot. I'm I get a lot of satisfaction out of that. And so I don't want to copy other people's products or features if It's not something obvious, but I think if it is something obvious like okay I have a read later app and if you tap on a link Should it just open or should it offer you an option to read that link later? You know, like that's a once you're building a read later app. That's a pretty obvious feature, right? And so if someone else did that first and then I copied it later, I wouldn't really feel bad about that so when I look at other competitors features and you know if some if a competitor does a feature before me and I'm getting a lot of pressure to add it I Try to be original as much as possible in the sense that if I try to not just copy it directly I try to you know only do things that Only copy things that I would have come upon anyway, right? It that were obvious you're walking a fine line there or or if I can't do that If it's something that someone else just made a really good point and did this awesome feature that I never would have thought of I'm like I really have to implement that to stay competitive. I'll try to do it differently I'll try to do it like in a substantially different way. Somebody has a grid you'll make like a wheel. I had the grid first Okay, you're owning the grid. Yeah. Well flip or beat everybody You know I I try to be original so even if I have to copy someone else's feature I'll try to do it my own way, and so I respect Other people who do that same thing so like I see in like the PC laptop space or the Android phone space versus Apple And you know other people I like when Android and when crazy PC manufacturers come up with their own solutions to problems Like I respect that even if I don't like their solution as much I have more respect for that Oh my god. I want to have another separate conversation just about like What you don't like about Android because I mean I'm sure there's some fascinating honestly. I haven't used it that much well There's your problem Android Android is not in my world. It's not in my attention span most days Yeah I don't spend that much time thinking about it because thinking about iOS and the website which even that I barely think about thinking about the iOS app is a full-time job right and Staying competitive on the iOS app is a full-time job all right I'm gonna we have to wrap unfortunately because I have a bunch more things I want to talk to you about but I quickly want to know just a couple of I mean you're obviously very focused you just Talked about being original and you obviously appreciate beautiful design What are some apps? What are things that you use every day that you're like? I wish I could have made this or I'm in awe of this or this is a beautiful You know really smart design that I love like what's something for you. I mean, I'd just like to know I Well that is it tough. Yeah, I have a long answer But we don't time for a long answer You know design My opinion of design is very different from what most people in my opinion of design is you know to quote Steve Jobs how it works? most people think design is putting textures and gradients on everything and So for me apps that work really well or solve the problem really well to me That's great design, so I think a good example that is Instagram it Instagram took mobile It was basically Twitter for photos which ends up being a really big deal What it did Facebook should have done that The reason why they bought Instagram is because it freaked them out because it attacked that one of the biggest things people use Facebook for In an area that Facebook was not doing very well in addressing Instagram solved that problem so well and by the way the way to use Instagram. I'll give my secret to everybody Never use filters Seriously changes the app makes you a better photographer Unless you're terrible at photography in which case you're doing well But you know what but the purpose of the of Instagram photos is not to look Old it's not to look like you took them took them with an it with an SLR And if you did and imported it that's kind of dirty don't do that people do that I know it's right that's rude they take pictures of DSLRs and then import the other way hey check out this awesome picture I took Phil Schiller did that did he yeah, and then he quit no wonder there. He was like I'm sure I've been shamed into quitting. Yeah, Mark. I I wish I could talk to you longer. You got to come back Thank you so much. I really appreciate Mark our man everybody and Yeah, you definitely coming back