13 ms·
Ffffound is shutting down
- maerF0x0 9y agoBlocked on my work's network? Whats on here?
- mankyd 9y agoIt's an invite only image bookmarking site.
- dan1234 9y agoFTA: "FFFFOUND! is a web service that not only allows the users to post and share their favorite images found on the web, but also dynamically recommends each user's tastes and interests for an inspirational image-bookmarking experience!!"
- 27182818284 9y agoIt is a place of found artwork and other neat design things from around the web. As a result there is some nudity. For example page 2 has everything from a topless woman on a window sill to an old black and white photo of someone bowling. Etc. Years ago I did development in a small design shop as a student and all of the designers had FFFound up at least once a day if not more.
- _eht 9y agoWell that was vague. I can't help but wonder why. Is it because they have exclusively worked with The Deck for advertising, or did they just get bored? Surely they could find some similarly minimal way to advertise in place of The Deck.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- misnamed 9y agoThe Deck is (or: was) pretty unique in the space - high-quality sites and much higher rates of pay than any of the competitors that tried to follow suit. Getting similar rates with even much larger and lower-quality ads would be hard.
- voidz 9y agoWell, I've never heard of this site before, but so long and thanks for all the fish, I guess. Looks like I missed a pretty nice website.
- gdubs 9y agoThis was a giant mood board for designers, with built-in exclusivity. You could see what others had liked and posted, but invitations were mysterious and scarce – they were seen as a badge of honor among top designers of the mid-2000s. Funny how memory can be so unreliable – wikipedia says the site was started in 2007, yet in my mind it's been around a lot longer than that. That places it only one year before Obama ran for president – which feels like yesterday, but is also nearly a decade ago.
- colmvp 9y agoThe whole exclusivity element of the design industry (fashion, interactive, graphic...) has always been a source of contention with me. On the one hand, I like working as a designer on projects as I enjoy the challenges and the output. And I've had the honor of working with some exceptional development teams in producing things that people use on a day to day basis. But the justifications for gating sites like this one or Dribbble has left me with an incredible distaste for the industry because it's fairly prevalent. I recall being in class and having the elite designers scoff from their towers over the lesser skilled individuals, as if somehow there's no way anyone else could attain the skill necessary to improve their own ability. Even my ex-Creative Director who studied under some ridiculously strong designers (e.g. Paul Rand) had that mindset where you either had it or you didn't. In contrast, when I'm learning things like deep learning or math, you have incredibly smart people who put out tons of free information or books, who actively help others on forums/Quora/SO on their quest to become better. And most importantly, believe in the individual to become a better person.
- sizzle 9y agoI feel that they have to protect their reputation as a lot of their talent can be emulated and their fame is tied to their accomplishments. The first person who started using hashtags goes by 'inventor of hashtags'. Applied fields have a much higher barrier to entry in my experience as a designer with a background in the applied sciences. In contrast, anyone can emulate their favorite designer and 'fake it till they make it'.
- mcphage 9y agoWeird, this was a site that I used to hit pretty regularly, and then it seems that one day I just forgot it existed? And so now linking to it I remember having gone to it, but I don't remember what it is.
- alexisnorman 9y agoRight? I had the same feeling when I saw this post. It's been almost ten years since I frequented FFFFOUND, but it's still weird to see it go. This site seriously opened me up to some genius art when I was in the most "creative" phase of my life; so much respect and thanks to the operators. RIP.
- unicornporn 9y ago+1! I made daily visits and haven't thought about it for years now. I wonder how many other sites like this I've forgotten about.
- endemic 9y agoHah, after skimming a page or two (love the vim-inspired navigation keys, btw) I remembered why I stopped going: tons of random nudity. Nothing like browsing design inspiration at work and having NSFW content show up.
- mattxxx 9y agothe vim nav is such a plus... I started doing it on ffffound by accident
- nothis 9y agoWow, you weren't kidding, lol. It's not even subtle or artsy. I guess even the coolest designers can't resist clicking a random image of boobs.
- edvinbesic 9y agoI don't remember there being that much nudity when I used it, but the first image I clicked on right now instantly showed me "related" images where at least 4 or 5 were nude women, and not exactly the artistic expression type, more like straight up porn.
- bebop22 9y agoNOOOOO! Why??
- franze 9y agohere is the google trends graph https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=FFFFOUND https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=FFFFOUND wonder what happened in july 2013? the decline in 2015 might be the push by google for mobile friendly sites.
- nobodynoes 9y agoPinterest probably killed it.
- vicentereig 9y agoUnsplash.com seems to be gaining some momentum in comparison since Jan 2016 https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=FFFFOUND,unsplash https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=FFFFOUND...
- exogen 9y agoPossibly coincidental, but July 1, 2013 was the date Google Reader was discontinued.
- icc97 9y agoYou could also ask what happend in Nov 2011 that stopped the exponential increase
- conesus 9y agoThat was the month they got rid of sharing and encouraged Reader users to share through Google+. It also inspired this tweet, which I remember fondly. https://twitter.com/jkottke/status/131434505947979776 https://twitter.com/jkottke/status/131434505947979776 Looking like @newsblur is the @pinboard of Google's deliciousing of Reader. 1 Nov 2011, @jkottke
- ic4l 9y agoImage not FFFFOUND
- ktRolster 9y agoThey really missed an opportunity for a headline: "FFFFOUND gets LLLLOST"
- huac 9y ago10 years, and I could never get an invite. RIP.
- balladeer 9y agoHaha. Same pinch. I tried couple of times, then gave up. Some 3-4 years ago was the last time I explored getting an invite, it was around the same time I kind of quit this hobby of being a shutterbug. Of course the two arent't related. I figured I haven't got what it takes. Besides I just hated spending time on taking photos and I would often forget to take photos of good views, scenes, or moments and by the time I would ready the camera it would be too late. No regrets though. Also, I suffered from "what DSLR is best at price X" condition for a long time. But still every time I land on a Flickr page (esp. after it was Yahoo'ed) I can't help thinking whether there is any Flickr replacement that is not bloated and then only name comes to my mind was of Ffffound (I always used to get the F count wrong).
- btym 9y agoWhat an abrupt end. And their robots.txt[1] never allowed the Internet Archive to crawl them, so nothing will be archived. [1]: http://ffffound.com/robots.txt http://ffffound.com/robots.txt
- jszymborski 9y agoArchiveTeam, however, is not as scrupulous :)
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- toomuchtodo 9y agoAlmost done. robots.txt is so pedestrian.
- eriknstr 9y agoWiki page doesn't contain much info. http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Ffffound%21 http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Ffffound%21
- toomuchtodo 9y agoI'm flying solo. Wish I could say I get tired of these site closures, but its sort of fun archiving them up. I'm in ur content, savin some culture.
- 9935c101ab17a66 9y agoHow can I contribute?
- Eric_WVGG 9y agoI have a backup utility rolling at http://ddddownload.club http://ddddownload.club . It's not perfect, but I'm afraid I don't have a lot of time left for troubleshooting.
- justinzollars 9y agosad, that's one of my brothers (who is a designer) favorite sites
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- yan 9y agoMan, talk about the ephemeral internet: One of my first projects[1] in Haskell was a small tool to go through my Google Reader favorites and download posts I tagged on ffffound. [1] https://github.com/yan/hhhhoard https://github.com/yan/hhhhoard
- simcop2387 9y agoThis is why i went with tinytinyrss when reader shut down. since i can host it myself theres little danger of it happening again
- upbeatlinux 9y agoSad. I remember, at least initially, Google Gears having a tough time trying to parse blog content linked from Ffffound. I'd download all my Reader content for plane rides only to have missing images. Brings back memories of a better time; before Yahoo killed Delicious and Flickr.
- sogen 9y agoThis is Colossal [0] is a good alternative. Text heavy. http://www.thisiscolossal.com/ http://www.thisiscolossal.com/
- vermooten 9y agoNot really.
- SwellJoe 9y agoMy only exposure to Ffffound was when I met someone at a party in Silicon Valley about ten years ago who was working on a clone of Ffffound ("but different"). I'd never heard of Ffffound, and he kept saying it with all of the "f"s sounded out like he was stuttering. It was hilarious on a couple of counts. For one, he was working on a clone of something that was so small at the time that I'd never heard of it, and I was living in the valley and kinda staying on top of startup news; something with no known business model, no big investment, etc. no evidence that it would go anywhere. And, for the other, it just sounded silly to sound out the name every time he said it. I looked up the site, probably the next day, and couldn't really figure out what it was for, so never visited again. I'm obviously not the target market, but that's one of the funnier memories I have of Silicon Valley and its culture. Also, I'm a little surprised it's lasted this long. I didn't expect it to, given my impression of it at the time. Good for them.
- hbosch 9y agoThe "better" version is (and has been for quite a while) Designspiration[0]. A ffffound account, for a while, was just a dick-measuring unit for designers around 2010 +/- a few years. I found through some Google-fu type means a prolific inviter via Reddit and got an account for like $35, but it turned out hardly be worth it. 0. http://designspiration.net/ http://designspiration.net/
- mfrykman 9y agoAside from community, is there a functional difference between designspiration and pinterest?
- hbosch 9y agoNot much. I've personally found Pinterest to be a little more geared toward crafts, recipes, and home decor -- but I know a lot of designers use it for inspiration and mood boarding. Designspiration is more narrow in terms of content, and not as deep in terms of interaction and community.
- 9y ago
- jack_jennings 9y agoMentioned this as a reply, but perhaps worth posting again: check out https://are.na https://are.na if you are one of the folks yearning for a similar thing (that isn't pinterest). Arena is certainly a tool for a certain niche, but it has a great API (some people have used it as a CMS using the API) and you can create "channels" of content (images, text, URLs) that can be nested/associated within other "channels".
- alexandersingh 9y agoSeconding this. Arena is a great tool with a really interesting community.
- AdrianRossouw 9y agoMaybe the archive team can help ? http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Main_Page http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Main_Page
- stevefeinstein 9y agoBefore 20 seconds ago, I did not know this was a thing.
- alkoumpa 9y agoIf they are shutting down, why not make (and share) an archive of the whole site, to preserve the works that's been done? Sharing through bittorrent is free and decentralized. They already host the images, and I get the feeling that sites in this niche are already in some gray-copyright area..
- joemi 9y agoI always had a really big problem with the site: so little attribution (proper or otherwise) of images.
- drax_ 9y agojjjjound.com the OG design inspiration site is still up.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- teddyknox 9y agoEllo.co stealing their metaphorical lunch
- accountyaccount 9y agoI've been visiting this weekly for 10 years. It's easy to take for granted now, but ffffound was before tumblr and really before Facebook was a household name. It predates the current use of the word meme. It's very much a bastion of the 2000's internet. In terms of long-term personal internet use ffffound for me is only second to boingboing (which I feel is nearing an end as well).
- kveykva 9y agoMain thing about ffffound I liked was that using h/j/k/l to skim through the site actually worked.
- fgblanch 9y agoI was a user of the service since 2007, and it is really a shame, although since some years ago the site looked abandoned. I really liked it for several reasons - it was one of the few web 2.0 services wave still alive (around 10 years) - during this time it's been always useful, without any redesign nor relaunch (10 years with the same product!!) - super simple design - organic growth, it didn't have any pretension to grow. In fact it was very limited - it was created by the japanese studio Tha.jp, you could feel japanese design in every detail - although it's true that there was a lot of NSFW content (specially lately) it was a really serendipitous experience for design inspiration. It was so random that it had nothing to do with trends, that for example you can easily spot in other design inspiration sites such as Pinterest or dribbble - there were no comments, just likes (much before Fb or IG) - the recommendation algorithm it was very weird, no actual visual similarity, no the typical more liked pictures or anything easy to find pattern in it(my guess is that it was not very well coded ;) but at the same time it was perfect in terms of discovering new stuff, so it worked in that sense. Well,as I said, it will be missed. Long live ffffound! BTW: some years ago, predicting the service was about to close (because of inactivity and server issues) I wrote a small script to backup the account. I leave it here just in case is helpful for anyone. https://github.com/fgblanch/ssssave https://github.com/fgblanch/ssssave
- fgblanch 9y agoI was a user of the service since 2007, and it is really a shame, although since some years ago the site looked abandoned. I really liked it for several reasons - it was one of the few web 2.0 services wave still alive (around 10 years) - during this time it's been always useful, without any redesign nor relaunch (10 years with the same product!!) - super simple design - organic growth, it didn't have any pretension to grow. In fact it was very limited - it was created by the japanese studio Tha.jp, you could feel japanese design in every detail - although it's true that there was a lot of NSFW content (specially lately) it was a really serendipitous experience for design inspiration. It was so random that it had nothing to do with trends, that for example you can easily spot in other design inspiration sites such as Pinterest or dribbble - there were no comments, just likes (much before Fb or IG) - the recommendation algorithm it was very weird, no actual visual similarity, no the typical more liked pictures or anything easy to find pattern in it(my guess is that it was not very well coded ;) but at the same time it was perfect in terms of discovering new stuff, so it worked in that sense. Well,as I said, it will be missed. Long live ffffound! BTW: some years ago, predicting the service was about to close (because of inactivity and server issues) I wrote a small script to backup the account. I leave it here just in case is helpful for anyone. https://github.com/fgblanch/ssssave https://github.com/fgblanch/ssssave
- zichy 9y agoFFFFOUND really is one of the last true "brutalist websites"[0]. Today's "minimalistic" websites have lots of whitespace and probably good typography, but also hundreds of KB of JavaScript and fucking progress bars. They are incredibly slow. FFFFOUND is incredibly fast with a design which they didn't need to change in 10 years. Because it works. -- [0]: http://brutalistwebsites.com/ http://brutalistwebsites.com/
- noy0001 9y agohi im here to say that i am the police and is shutting down this website immediately. and going to arrest you for hacking people and stealing their money
- noy0001 9y agohi i'm here to say i'm the poilce and is shutting down this website forever so you can't steal peoples money and hack them then we will come and aresst you and burn you website by burning you computer with my gun bet our dust were at your front door right now open the door or you die