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Flickr Co-Founder Caterina Fake on the Value of Viral Loops

22 points by spoon16 16y ago

pclark 16y ago
Viral loops is a great book, I picked it up a few days ago. If only it had a kindle edition.
- alanthonyc 16y ago
  It's on Kindle now. Maybe they added it in just the past couple of days.
  - pclark 16y ago
    haha, amazing. I literally checked two days ago and it wasn't available, it arrived yesterday and today its on kindle.
- dpritchett 16y ago
  I hadn't heard of it but I enjoyed this list of most-highlighted passages from the just-released Kindle edition: http://kindle.amazon.com/work/viral-loop-facebook-businesses-themselves/B002QKCOM4 http://kindle.amazon.com/work/viral-loop-facebook-businesses...
cake 16y ago
In this article in really sounds like Catherina Fake regrets her decision of selling Flickr. It must be a very hard decision : accept 40 M$ or keep growing very personal work. What I found interesing is that she underlines the fact that Flickr has been (is) very popular because of special circonstances, the fact that digital cameras began to be cheap and widespread, more and more people blogging... It seems like Flickr became successful in a large part because of a lot of luck.
- petercooper 16y ago
  It must be a very hard decision : accept 40 M$ or keep growing very personal work. It sounds agonizing.
  - cake 16y ago
    Well I genuinely think that it must be a difficult decision to leave years of personal work behind, the decision making on your own project and the potential of an higher bid. But that's just my personal perspective, a more rational point of view is of course obvious. In my opinion the aquisition didn't benefit the Flickr project very much (for the users), I have the feeling that it is stagnating right now.
    - brlewis 16y ago
      Serious question: If it's stagnating, what needs improving?
      - kordless 16y ago
        Bigger photos for one. It's painful to look at photos in the current fixed format. Have you seen the size of monitors today? In general I also find the management interface a bit awkward. Perhaps a few weekend of kill a feature are needed. I think they've tried to be all things to a rather diverse user group and have suffered b/c of it. It's still fantastic though!
        brlewis 16y ago
        What features would you keep in the management interface?
joshu 16y ago
I got a shout out, woo-hoo! I think tagging is best when people tag items that aren't theirs. Otherwise they are inclined to abuse it as a distribution mechanism. If tagging well-served photos, then why do they have Groups Sets Collections, etc? Hmph. I also disagree that tagging was responsible for flickr's success. (2001, not 2004 for creating it, incidentally.)

22 points by spoon16 16y ago

pclark 16y ago

Viral loops is a great book, I picked it up a few days ago. If only it had a kindle edition.

alanthonyc 16y ago
It's on Kindle now. Maybe they added it in just the past couple of days.
- pclark 16y ago
  haha, amazing. I literally checked two days ago and it wasn't available, it arrived yesterday and today its on kindle.
dpritchett 16y ago
I hadn't heard of it but I enjoyed this list of most-highlighted passages from the just-released Kindle edition: http://kindle.amazon.com/work/viral-loop-facebook-businesses-themselves/B002QKCOM4 http://kindle.amazon.com/work/viral-loop-facebook-businesses...

cake 16y ago

In this article in really sounds like Catherina Fake regrets her decision of selling Flickr. It must be a very hard decision : accept 40 M$ or keep growing very personal work. What I found interesing is that she underlines the fact that Flickr has been (is) very popular because of special circonstances, the fact that digital cameras began to be cheap and widespread, more and more people blogging... It seems like Flickr became successful in a large part because of a lot of luck.

petercooper 16y ago
It must be a very hard decision : accept 40 M$ or keep growing very personal work. It sounds agonizing.
- cake 16y ago
  Well I genuinely think that it must be a difficult decision to leave years of personal work behind, the decision making on your own project and the potential of an higher bid. But that's just my personal perspective, a more rational point of view is of course obvious. In my opinion the aquisition didn't benefit the Flickr project very much (for the users), I have the feeling that it is stagnating right now.
  - brlewis 16y ago
    Serious question: If it's stagnating, what needs improving?
    - kordless 16y ago
      Bigger photos for one. It's painful to look at photos in the current fixed format. Have you seen the size of monitors today? In general I also find the management interface a bit awkward. Perhaps a few weekend of kill a feature are needed. I think they've tried to be all things to a rather diverse user group and have suffered b/c of it. It's still fantastic though!
      - brlewis 16y ago
        What features would you keep in the management interface?

joshu 16y ago

I got a shout out, woo-hoo! I think tagging is best when people tag items that aren't theirs. Otherwise they are inclined to abuse it as a distribution mechanism. If tagging well-served photos, then why do they have Groups Sets Collections, etc? Hmph. I also disagree that tagging was responsible for flickr's success. (2001, not 2004 for creating it, incidentally.)