Comments on: What Makes Flickr So Special Anyway?

By: ::HorsePigCow:: marketing uncommon » Now with Threaded Comments!

::HorsePigCow:: marketing uncommon » Now with Threaded Comments! — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 23:22:54 +0000

[...] inspired by a rather heated ’side discussion’ on my Flickr Love post, I thought it would keep these threads in line. Tell me what you think. I’m giving it a [...]

By: Citizen Agency » Choice words from Stewart Butterfield

Citizen Agency » Choice words from Stewart Butterfield — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 21:03:42 +0000

[...] Butterfield: I’m not sure I have a universal answer to that. Take the people working on Flickr, including myself, a lot of the development team and Caterina Fake who’s my wife but also the co-founder; all had really extensive experiences with online communities, most of us going back to the days before the Web. We worked really hard but I don’t think we had any formula for how to pull it off. Flickr could have gone in a million different ways. [...]

By: Reinier Meenhorst

Reinier Meenhorst — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 23:27:39 +0000

Apart from a lot of painful miscommunication, this is an interesting thread which shows a lot of commitment if your read between the lines, from several people I admire.

I sure hope that you’ll convert all this into a very interesting part of your talk at FOWA Tara. looking forward to seeing you speak. Meanwhile, I’ll feed my curiosity with following your thoughts on Twitter.

By: Damon Billian

Damon Billian — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 22:52:08 +0000

Is Thomas going to kill me if I say I love Flickr? I think Flickr also made it because it is easy to use. I also think they’ve done a good job of not going into feature overload.

Thomas: It looks like you guys are doing great stuff over there & I will try to upload some photos/check the community out.

By: miss rogue

miss rogue — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 19:40:49 +0000

@mauror – I’ve not only READ the Cathedral and the Bazaar, but I’ve refered to it several times in my blog.

I think it’s an awesome publication + it is absolutely canonical to our era. I do think, however, it is too simplistic to lump all communities centralized and decentralized into this assessment.

Have you also read, “The Starfish and the Spider”?

Oh…and I’m not that young. I have a teenage son, you know…

By: Todd Sieling

Todd Sieling — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 17:15:34 +0000

I’m getting in here a day late, wanting to give myself some time to reflect before posting. There’s a lot of emotion in this thread, and I should fully disclose before saying anything that I’m on the Ma.gnolia team, but I’m not here to talk about how Ma.gnolia has come into the conversation, because it was just as an example and not an attack at all.

I do want to mention that Tara and Chris don’t help us through direct and respectful advocacy as much as they do through their incredible perspective, insight and limitless optimism. They help us clarify our goals, and tune us into what they hear and see; they challenge our assumptions and our abilities; they praise the good stuff we do and give us straight talk about where we fall short. And when we disagree, they move without effort towards what we can agree on, always keeping in mind that it’s about making Ma.gnolia better. If they were personal trainers, anyone could lose 10lbs in the first two weeks, I’d bet.

I should also mention that we like what Zooomr’s got going on. Portals? Bloody brilliant! In fact, Thomas and I had a good exchange yesterday that led into talk about some integration between Zooomr and Ma.gnolia, which would be a sweet bridge between two growing communities.

Tara’s post didn’t get a fair shake in the comments, because the thread wandered into comparing two products on the basis of features, and got overly personal. Ironically, that’s a lot of what this blog post warned against, instead highlighting the effects of adaptability, attitude, and good will towards members as key parts of the secret to success. What’s amazing is that Tara posts this stuff in the clear, free for anyone to read. No expensive seminar to attend, no subscriptions or consulting fees. The keys to a kingdom of knowledge left out on the table for anyone to pick up and try out. This post is a gift.

I bookmarked this post as one of my all time favorites, and it’s one I’ll re-read and be sure to share. Not because it talks about Ma.gnolia but because you can get the worth of ten books on product management in about 5 minutes of reading and reflection. Thanks Tara!

By: Scrapblog Blog

Scrapblog Blog — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 15:15:24 +0000

Conditions for serendipity…

…

By: mauror

mauror — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 11:43:29 +0000

Besides, wasn’t it better in the old days days of USENET, when you could collapse and entire flame war (I was almost writing ‘dicksize’, but the Wikipedia calls them Holy wars thread and going on with the constructive thread of the discussion without being distracted?

mauror – So long and thanks for all the fish

By: mauror

mauror — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 11:34:51 +0000

Hi Tara, I've been visiting your blog for a while and I've been increasingly asking myself: 'does she knows about The Cathedral and the Bazaar? It looks like she doesn't' Forgive me, but I see you (and not only you, a lot of other web2.0 evangelists) going around the issues of that essay and not really getting to the point is really disapponting (Maybe you are just too young, which is a good thing!). It almost looks like you have been telling the story of the Flickr community without realizing there is a pattern in there: it's the successful story of the growth of a thriving Bazaar (in the word of ESR).

By: Thomas Hawk

Thomas Hawk — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 00:01:58 +0000

Chris totally man. And I appreciated the IM. It’s certainly not spam and you’re someone I know and I don’t see anything wrong with this at all. Ma.gnolia’s a great site and this wasn’t meant to sound like some sort of spammy thing at all. Heck, I tell people to check out Zooomr all the time. Certainly part of just hanging out and having friends is talking about cool sites even if you are working with/for them. But certainly didn’t mean to suggest anything was out of line with your suggestion. In fact the only reason I mentioned Ma.gnolia in all of this is by way of an unrelated example of something that felt hypocritical on Tara’s part for me. I would not characterize your recommending that site to me as a “pitch” at all.

Sleep is good man but there ain’t no time for it yet. Too much work to do. Too many photos to take. Someday though, someday.