I am glad that the Flickr folks have decided to focus on: “the best way to store, share, sort your photos online”

Here are my lightly edited notes from Stewart’s fcking talk about designing Flickr last Thursday:</a> Stewart’s fcking presentation

  • “groupware for play” is Ludicorp’s motto
  • hard to raise money in fall 2003 for massive multi-player gaming
  • started as a way to raise money, now solves a problem with digital photos
  • rating people made sense in GNE
  • flickr original im/photo sharing
  • first mistake - this is neat, what is it : friendster + im + photo sharing
  • no clear idea what you want to do makes designing hard
  • eric flash developer who lives in NY started sending pictures of kids
  • these photos turned into magical, shared experience
  • hard to stumble onto friends on Flickr because old version required you to be logged on at the same time!
  • 8 weeks from decision to initial launch
  • administrivia mostly - colo, load balancer install
  • 1999: upfront categorization of web done by human beings (yahoo) but rather links (google) worked
  • 2004: google’s approach validated and successful, yahoo’s far less so!
  • link is human value judgement
  • got first digital camera in 99, now has 5000 pictures
  • mostly organized by time
  • most common method is albums (artifact of old film paradigm)
  • work well with 2 or 8 or 15
  • after a certain point, it doesn’t work, have to remember where
  • unless you are anal :-)
  • Stewart stores everything on desktop which he periodically archives
  • old Flickr (OF) couldn’t change title of photos because you were worried about people re-titling it offensively
  • or url wouldn’t work so they didn’t allow public to change to private and vice versa
  • OF couldn’t delete photos because of 404 error fear
  • OF:friendster with chat, photo with chat, no focus!
  • there is no maxim
  • because you wouldn’t build something without knowing what you were building
  • when did u figure out you wwere going to be photo sharing?
  • 6 weeks ago!
  • if u can ‘t articulate clearly and quickly what the product is, you are in trouble
  • OF:live component was over emphasized
  • OF:couldn’t see photos unless you were online at the same time as the person sharing
  • meta data input should be collaborative and fun
  • people should be able to add bits when it occurs to them
  • not just when I add the photo but also when others look at them
  • the best way to store, share, sort your photos online
  • next set of features: groups and group photos
  • private groups are twice as active
  • just like 1/3 of TypePad blogs are private
  • they used flash in order to re-use GNE base
  • 90% of server stuff from GNE
  • 60% client stuff from GNE
  • GNE prototype was in DHTML
  • changed to use Flash - none had ever worked with Flash before
  • live socket open to server - can get/receive info via scripts over HTTP
  • using Flash 6 - 98% of browsers have it
  • price: very cheap! 5 dollars (American or Canadian? ) a month no bandwidth limits
  • building upload apps so you can upload outside the browser
  • windows only app
  • bookmarklet

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