Flickr , the glorify photo management and sharing site , recently celebrate its third day of remembrance andIDG News Servicehad an opportunity to chat with co - father and cosmopolitan director Stewart Butterfield about Flickr ’s outgrowth in size and quality , its status as a Yahoo party , near and long - term plans , as well as peanut butter .
An edited version of the conversation follows .
IDGNS : Flickr just turned 3 years sure-enough . How do you intend it will look and manoeuvre three year from now ?
Stewart Butterfield : We have a concrete imaginativeness to be the eyes of the worldly concern , the primary reservoir for sharing and discover what people see all around the humankind . I do n’t see that modify any time soon . The challenge is how we make it bigger while still maintaining the same quality and sense of intimacy with now 7.2 million registered users and 23 million monthly unique visitor . It comes down to urban planning in a way that a massive city like London has all kinds of cozy minuscule neighborhood . Making something like that chance is a huge and thought-provoking matter .
We also tie very well into Yahoo ’s newly articulated military mission , which is to connect people to their passions , their community of interests and the humans ’s knowledge . Flickr has a really interesting role to bring in that . We have a lot of people who are passionate about photography but there are literally K of groups on Flickr about garden and knitwork and all kinds of other passions people have . Flickr is a great medium for those interaction as well .
IDGNS : If you ’re the eyes of the reality , do you foresee Flickr get a tidings component ?
Flickr co - laminitis Stewart Butterfield
Butterfield : Yes , we already allow for that and it already happens but it ’s not surfaced nor package up very well . But almost every day , Flickr is used as a source for photograph that either do n’t exist anywhere else or that there ’s just a adult variety on Flickr . A good representative is when the New York Yankee histrion ’s woodworking plane crashed into a [ Manhattan ] building . A text bulletin move out on the wire but there were n’t photograph available , so the Yahoo front page team did a search for “ NYC crash ” on Flickr and found the first couple of picture that had been post and were n’t uncommitted from any other source at that time . By the metre photos originate coming out of the conducting wire avail , there were oodles and tons of image from different multitude on Flickr , and that ’s where the Yahoo front page target to , linking to the Flickr photos . exposit that capability and form it easy so it ’s not a manual unconscious process is definitely something we ’re interested in .
The flip side is that it does n’t have to be self-aggrandising , discover international tidings for it to be substantial to citizenry . … We did a braggart round of geotagging feature in the 2d half of last year and are always looking to improve those as well . We have more than 12.6 million geotagged photograph . It ’s well-situated to imagine a future where you may say : “ Show me photograph taken within the last 15 minutes within a klick of me . ” That puzzle very interesting , obviously .
IDGNS : Are you design anything to help your community of photographers to trade or commercially syndicate their photos ?
Butterfield : It ’s something we ’re judge and looking at different approaches . The interesting affair about the New York wreck case is that there was n’t any time to negociate rights to utilise those photos on the Yahoo front page , so they relate to the photos on Flickr . If you ’re a exposure editor program in any kind of newsworthiness environment you ca n’t negotiate one - off license with a bunch of different mass because it ’s just too meter consuming .
IDGNS : Will you at some point have a mechanism where photographers have previously posit how their photos might be used if someone ’s interested ?
Butterfield : We have nothing to announce in that esteem but it ’s certainly in the realm of my imagination .
IDGNS : Who do you see as Flickr ’s chief competition ?
Butterfield : That ’s a very interesting question because we talk about this all the time . When we first bewilder to Yahoo , a lot of people on the concern side wanted to know how big was the market and what percentage we had . I ’d always say , much to their defeat , that the market is Flickr user and we have 100 percent of it . I still think we do n’t have any real lineal rivalry . I ’m sure one day we will .
In a sense , we compete with other photo - sharing site , but we ’re offering something very unlike . Flickr really created a newfangled class of app , a newfangled product family and a new kind of use . In another sense , if multitude expend a lot of time with Flickr and are deeply meshed with it , we compete indirectly with sites where citizenry go to fall out , like Facebook , MySpace . But I definitely do n’t see us in direct competition with them .
IDGNS : You told me that Yahoo has been good for Flickr . How has Flickr been good for Yahoo ?
Butterfield : It ’s a bit unfair to think that there were n’t all kinds of hyper - talented and reform-minded people with groundbreaking ideas around Yahoo [ prior to the Flickr acquisition ] . But over the last couple of years , Yahoo has gotten a lot better at realizing some of the groundbreaking voltage and I ’d like to think we ’ve add to the way new products are modernise and how innovation fall out . In fact , Caterina Fake , my wife and Flickr carbon monoxide - founder , go to a team call the Technology Development Group that is creditworthy for a deal of that stuff .
IDGNS : The Peanut Butter Manifesto memoranda get a circle of attention last year . It say Yahoo was distribute out too thin , and was n’t going deep enough into some areas . How do the arguments in that memo employ to Flickr , if at all ?
Butterfield : There ’s a twain of things . Flickr was explicitly mentioned in the memo , as an area in which we ’re investing in two alike areas , the other one Yahoo Photos . But I ’m not sure the memo applies very directly to Flickr . We ’re very focussed on one effect mission . Internally Flickr is making a turn of larger wager and it ’s a fairly discreet unit inside of Yahoo , both on the operational and the product level . To the extent that the criticisms in the memo are things Yahoo should take activity on , then they do n’t apply so much to Flickr . … I do n’t think Flickr and Yahoo Photos were the key item of the memo .
IDGNS : Do you see Yahoo Photos serving a different character of audience than Flickr ?
Butterfield : That ’s the easy way to put it , but both audience are evolving and it ’s not a square demographic split . It ’s not like young people utilize Flickr and honest-to-god people employ Yahoo Photos . The age range is in reality pretty like . It ’s more about how people experience about share their life online and even more simply about how into the net people are . The Flickr exploiter is more concerned in interacting , in the community aspects .
IDGNS : Yahoo has a lot of sites and services and some people palpate they could be better integrated so it ’s sluttish for substance abuser to move among them . What is being done with Flickr in that esteem , if anything ?
Butterfield : There ’s a constant balancing act between making each production or belongings with child in its own right and making integration for the whole connection act upon really well . There has been [ Flickr ] integration with other Yahoo property that makes sense . They tend to be fairly smaller scale leaf but each of them is important in its own right and we ’re always calculate for opportunity to do more . An model : when you ’re reexamine a hotel or a terminus in Yahoo Travel you could bring in pic from Flickr . There are lots of little examples like that .
IDGNS : Flickr is weigh a groundbreaker in tagging and categorization of subject matter by users . How do you see tagging evolve ? I ’m start to sense some dissatisfaction with it .
Butterfield : At Flickr , tagging is always evolving . It can sure be dependable that people are less buzzing about the rotatory nature of tagging . On the other hand , many people may not know tagging is why the search consequence incline to be good on Flickr . It ’s why you’re able to make a veridical - clip search of the 400 million - plus photo on Flickr .
IDGNS : How is the monetisation of Flickr going ? Are Yahoo executive satisfied with it ?
Butterfield : We do n’t go down revenues by property but I can definitely say we ’re happy with it . The kernel of the business is the premium subscription divine service , and we do much better in that than we expect in the other days . We ’re gradually starting to try out more with stigmatise advertizing and there ’s contextual advertising in the search . Over clip , advertising will become a great component of the revenue exposure . So mass are definitely happy at Yahoo . There ’s never been any headache about Flickr ’s revenue and the long - term potential is excellent .
