Tumblr's Mr. Karp (Photo: wikipedia.org)

PartyHat.GIF Tumblr just passed a huge traffic benchmark by finally reaching 170 million global users a month. It's now the ninth most visited site in the U.S., according to Quantcast. David Karp took to the Tumblr Staff site to congratulate his users and say, "You guys have earned an audience bigger than the biggest TV networks, and you continue to make some of the most thought provoking, insightful, inspiring, funny, diverse, and compelling content being created today."

Young Money Also worth noting is that Tiffany & Co launched their official Tumblr today. It's called From Out Of The Blue. The blog contains a couple pictures of necklaces containing an unfathomable number of diamonds and a promotional video that would make any tween ask their parents for a diamond tiara. That's what Tiffany is going for, right?

Put Your Skills To Good Use The New York tech community organizing group, NY Tech Responds, is putting on a grouping of events dedicated to helping Hurricane Sandy relief efforts. On December 1st and 2nd, they'll be having a talk called the Sandy Relief Agency Conference, a hackathon, and a reception to kick off their Sandy fundraising campaign. Registration for the hackathon is now open and you can get tons of more information on their website. Use your skills to help those in need!

Custom Giving Is Good Makeably, a marketplace for custom goods started by two ex-Googlers, has just launched a campaign with New York Cares called Make for Good. Kids from the Bronx have drawn their ideal Christmas wish and when a Makeably user sponsors the project, it gets made by one of the site's custom makers. Since its launch, the project now has around 150 makers helping out in 15 countries. Buyers no longer need an access code to help out.

Finna Reschedule That Startup Weekend's plans to team up with the FinTech Innovation Lab and the NYC FinTech Startups meetup for the first-ever FinTech Startup Weekend were squashed by Hurricane Sandy. But have no fear! The event has now been rescheduled for December 7 to 9 at Alley NYC. Throughout the weekend, there will be mentors, including VCs, lawyers and designers, stopping by to give teams advice on what they’re doing.

Nick Gavronsky, an OpenFin employee who helps run Startup Weekend with Frank Denbow, told Betabeat earlier this month that FinTech weekend is “not really like a hackathon, it’s more for first-time people” who want to start building something.

More Exploring Now Possible The gamified city exploration site, Stray Boots, announced today that it completed a $2 million Series A funding round. The round was led by Milestone Venture Partners and joined by Correlation Ventures, Great Oaks, and several angel investors. This is Stray Boots’ first venture capital raise.

Cabs Are Expensive Apparently a lot of people don't feel like spending money to get to the airport to see their families. Shairporter, the site that lets you split the price of a cab to get to the airport, told Betabeat that its user base grew 70% over Thanksgiving weekend. Founder and CEO Winston Wu told Betabeat that the company is still in continuing discussions with NYU dorms for their next big push for the holidays in December. The company also gave away free cab rides to NYU students who shared their page on Facebook on Thanksgiving.

Vamos De Compras Bêmbele, Latin America’s new men's and women's e-commerce site, went live yesterday. The company is a joint venture between New York City based private equity firm PanAmerican Capital and two other significant organizations in the Latin American region. CEO Dean Schaffer was quoted in a press release sent to Betabeat as saying, "Bêmbele takes care of every aspect of the logistics process for our customers –including duties, import taxes, and shipping expenses– and delivers an order directly to their door at no additional cost.”

A cab ride to and from the airport, like paying someone to do your laundry, is one of the indulgences New Yorkers tend to allow themselves, even when a cheaper option is available. Even more so during the holidays: you're about to spend the weekend in a food coma with all your judge-y relatives, so treat yo self!

A recently launched startup called Shairporter might help mitigate the cost. The company, which launched a couple weeks ago and is still in beta, helps users split the cost of a cab or black car to the airport. Founder and CEO Winston Wu said Shairporter has a mobile app in the works that can handle things like neighborhood-to-neighborhood rides, but it's focusing on traveling to the airport because "that's where the initial need is."

Users log onto the site using their Facebook account--a Shairporter log-in is also in the works--to post a ride or grab a seat on one that's already listed. The cost goes down as the seats fill up. If someone requests to join a trip you've posted, say from the East Village to LaGuardia, you can check out his or her profile and then have three options: decline, discuss (via private messages) or accept, in which case your contact information is shared.

After Hurricane Sandy, Shairporter, which was still in private beta, let users access its Facebook page to start organizing ride-shares between neighborhoods and has been ramping up since its launch. "Yesterday, our numbers quadrupled," Mr. Wu said. "We're kind of getting on that exponential trajectory."

Part of the growth is through discussions with NYU and other schools. "It turns out two of the biggest dorms, one's called Founders and one's called University, they both have about 900 students living there, and the RAs have been trying to solve this problem using message forums and more remedial tools," Mr. Wu explained. He's also been discussing the service with Weinstein Hall and Third Avenue North.

Of course, like many new startup offerings, the utility of the service greatly depends on how many people sign up. Earlier this week, the New York Daily News covered another New York company called Weeels that was offering discounted shared cab rides ($18 rides from Park Slope to LaGuardia Airport and $20 one-way rides from Williamsburg to JFK airport) using an algorithm that combs through "submitted data to connect travelers leaving at similar times." However, only 20 riders had signed up using founder David Mahfouda's Google Doc by the time the article was published.