Wow – Thank you for all your thoughtful comments. It’s lovely to hear that you enjoyed the article! I wanted to address a couple of things directly…
Richard said “I wonder if, in the described Flickr groups, you observe a small group of people who contribute a lot of comments and photos and a large group who contribute a lot less.“
Yes, I’m sure that’s often the case, particularly when people are finding their feet within a new group of people. It depends a bit on the sort of group too, I think. I’ve observed a certain cycle on Flickr several times which I think is fascinating. An example is where someone might post to our Help Forum asking a question (or being angry about something!), and then I’ll see that same person actually being helpful in some of the other threads! I think what often happens in groups is that some members will participate and engage more deeply than others, and often end up being “promoted” to a moderator or an admin.
Nielsen’s theory about lurking really just mirrors the way we are offline, doesn’t it? Not everyone’s an extrovert or an exhibitionist.
Charles said “Isn’t that the essence of this whole “˜internet’ thing?!?“
Absolutely! We the People of the Internet have always known that, but I think it’s a relatively new realisation for the megacorps and broadcasters out there :)
“I think the analogy can even be expanded further, Flickr as an institution on the internet, even the beginnings of a visual processing (occipital) “˜lobe’ of the internet. Each portion of the “˜society’ acts to contribute, aggregate, processe, etc. the inputs from the edge of the network and therefore adds their own value to it.“
What a wonderful thing to say!! I think I love you!
Chris said “Maybe I should organise a meet!“
I’d highly recommend that. Flickr meets are great! There are lots happening all over the world, a sample of which you can see over in “the Flickr group on Upcoming”:http://upcoming.yahoo.com/group/8/.
Douglas said ”…and leave us with the rather elliptical suggestion that “identity and connections appear to have social value”?. That doesn’t explain any actual suspicion, though, and I’d be very interested in your take on where this suspicion comes from.“
(This could probably fill a whole other article.)
Apologies for the ellipsis – I thought it was particularly hard to quantify that concept, so made a slightly cheeky assertion rather than stating a hard fact.
One of the most powerful things about Flickr, I think, is that it allows us to see true lives and actual people. Certainly there is a huge artistic vein to the content, but there are also many, many life stories and often gritty realities. Perhaps it’s as if there’s a “you show me yours and I’ll show you mine” thing going on. Perhaps it’s that people who don’t engage and share after a while aren’t “joining in.”
Lori said “in a smaller, growing community, how do we make sure trolls don’t set up shop and dominate the conversation?“
You need to concentrate and be present. If someone comes by and makes waves, you’re well within your rights to weed them out. It’s like that annoying dude at your party who’s hitting on all the chicks and generally being a dork. No harm in asking him to leave…
Richard A. said “hmm how do I add this user as a contact? where is that link again!? dang flicker interface..“
Wily, isn’t it? (You can add someone as a contact a few different ways: by mousing over their buddy icon, clicking on the little arrow that pops up and choosing “Add as a contact”, or by heading for their profile and clicking “Add x as a contact.” Totally acknowledge this could be easier, fwiw.)
Chris H. said “I then wrote a few lines of CSS and made a custom stylesheet that could be applied to Flickr automatically by the browser.“
Fantastic! I must mention my very favourite Greasemonkey hack… An Englishman named Pip wrote a little script to “change the spelling”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/pip/59343912/ of “favorite” to the Queen’s English spelling, “favourite” :)
There are “loads of hacks like this”:http://www.flickr.com/search/?ss=1&w=all&q=greasemonkey+screenshot+flickr&m=text… though maybe “hacks” is the wrong word. Perhaps “enhancements” is better.
“It’s interesting how negative the reaction has been to [video] on Flickr. So much for the community spirit of love. This could be a good example of how a community fights change introduced by its creators.“
Yes, agreed. You could say that the negativity is also a sign of love, that people feel such passion for the place and feel protective of it. Interestingly, there was also a “backlash against the backlash” over video on Flickr, where other members helped to assuage fears, poke fun or stay the course with video. We knew it was a big change – absolutely – but we also knew that it was going to be a lot of fun, opening up new channels for creativity and documentation – a position we felt confident we could defend. And you’re right, there’s some wonderful stuff coming online, which you can get a taste of over in “the Video! Video! Video! Flickr group”:http://flickr.com/groups/video/pool/ …
Copy & paste the code below to embed this comment.
Thomas Kindig
I come from a different background and experience in terms of exposure to people and their expectations. Consider yourself blessed with a pleasing creative experience. You have enjoyed a self-selecting creative audience.
My work has been in Department of Defense and Financial services areas. Here you meet a completely different kind of user. This user is frustrated if there is not ONECLEARWAY to locate what they want or effect a certain action. They have a checklist mentality, and their expectations are formed by previous experience, even when that experience is not necessarily related to your application paradigm. It can be a real challenge to make a web page look like the financials page of the WSJ. And you may have to do this even when you know that usability will suffer.
I have encountered people who are not just frustrated but actually offended by design decisions which have been tested against a significant group of users.
This does not mean that they will not adapt. However the pace of change and choices made must be carefully thought out so as not to alienate these users. Things that are easily apparent to the creative user who is engaged and willing to invest a little time in an adventure—may well lead this user to judge your work as “Crap”.
As “flickr becomes about uptime, speed, and flexibility—almost detaching the things we build from the content itself and people’s interaction with it.” In terms of community, would it seem that services like our site (http://www.boingboing.net/2008/03/19/compfight-powerful-s.html), born out of a niche that flickr may not fill, represent the new direction for the flickr community? This is obviously not flickr’s core, but hey, you guys nailed it, nobody else in this market space has come close… What do you do now?
Your providing efficient tools for extending the core of flickr through the API. How do you see flickr interacting with the extended communities and fostering your own growth from now, on? Do you attempt to shape these extended communities with the same goals that you mentioned aided in flickrs initial growth? Do you simply add more media types, there by extending through the use of existing infrastructure? i.e. videos
This article makes me thankful that there are still people in the world who design with hospitality in mind. It gets at the heart of what people yearn for on the web, a place that makes them feel comfortable and treats them as a person while providing them the simple, elegant tools to do what they need and interact. There’s simple rules to being a great host, on and offline, and those who master those rules have the best parties. Great job.
Flickr’s a fantastic tool, we use it for our personal photos and even as a way of sharing photos with 3rd party design agencies. With the privacy controls we can choose who will view our images and for £24 we get two years of unlimited storage and bandwidth; much more economical then hosting it ourselves.
It’s a great community (much more fun then Facebook) has a fantastic feature set and offers more and more every time I visit.
It has also provided another portal to find Creative Commons licence imagery.
So form a commercial front and personal front flickr is a community to love; its a great design and coding of the quality you’d expect more from our friends at Google.
Anyhoo that’s starting to sound like an advert.
Raise your glasses to the site that continues to engage its community and gives without asking.
Copy & paste the code below to embed this comment.
Cara Pinle
I have been a member of Flickr for a couple of years but haven’t discovered the functions much, yet. I have been trying similar websites but Flickr is the one I keep coming back to upload my photos. People say personal websites will disappear because we have inexpensive websites like Flickr to show off the content.
“”¦I worked hard to make the site seem as if there was a person behind the screen talking to you. As we churned out pages to piece the site together, I obsessed about copy all over the place to make Flickr sound human.”?
I think this is what we have been trying to do especially since E-commerce websites became popular. The information and products suppliers are trying to provide services which they need to add value to differentiate them from their competitors. The higher point of services for example, is where users can shop things as if he is at an actual shop getting advised or informed face-to-face.
It is possible 10 years from now, we may use or discover the “computer”? in a totally different way and we deal with a person behind a webcam or projected hologram. The way of providing online services may totally change. Flickr’s friendly words are one of these steps for future. I had been involved with a sharing-content —website before. The actual copy on the site, as well as having a black or while background, were some of the larger issues we had to address.
Copy & paste the code below to embed this comment.
lee doolan
,——
| Amy Franceschini is one of my favorite artists. In 2002, she created a
| sculpture called Game for the Masses, her “Intro to Game Theory.”? In
| game play, players distribute all the “pucks”? evenly. Whoever
| manages to collect all the pucks wins. That’s it.
`——
Thomas said“My work has been in Department of Defense and Financial services areas. Here you meet a completely different kind of user. This user is frustrated if there is not ONECLEARWAY to locate what they want or effect a certain action.“
Certainly. The trick with large, information-heavy sites designed from within the organization is that you often end up with impenetrable systems that only a mother could love. I tried to pay a parking ticket on the Californian Department of Motor Vehicles site the other day, and it took me a while to work out where to do it, when I would have thought this is a) a pretty common task, and b) a money earner!
Even though Flickr sets a certain tone, and is a fairly free-flowing place, we’ve also tried very hard to make the “micro-interactions”, like changing an email address or adding a tag very direct and clear. This sort of effort can happen in any system, whether it’s a fun place to be, or not.
“I have encountered people who are not just frustrated but actually offended by design decisions which have been tested against a significant group of users.“
Funnily enough, that actually happens on Flickr too, every time we release a new feature! It’s probably change more than anything else that people react to. Who knows? If there was focus on interaction design on every site, perhaps there would be less frustration? ;)
Ryan said“How do you see flickr interacting with the extended communities and fostering your own growth from now, on?“
Good question! Hard to answer though, if you consider Flickr to be more of a vessel than anything else. I mean, Flickr itself doesn’t really interact with anything. Certainly, the “web” around Flickr will grow and expand, as content squirts all over the place, but I guess whether Flickr has influence over directing that growth is the interesting bit. I’d say Flickr is practically agnostic in that regard. We have guidelines about how to make use of the API, and guidelines about how to participate on Flickr itself. Apart from that, it’s really up to you how and when you share content from Flickr in other places.
“Do you attempt to shape these extended communities with the same goals that you mentioned aided in flickr’s initial growth?“
Not really, no. We try to allow people to share as they see fit. That’s possibly helped the proliferation and growth of the “Flickrverse” outside the edges of flickr.com.
When you decide you’re going to open the gates and let the data you host out on to the web, you have to make sure that a) you and your team are prepared, and b) that you respect your members’ right to opt out if they’re not into it.
Paul Thank you! Try throwing a “bacon camp” party! (With actual bacon!)
Chris Cheers!
Cara said“People say personal websites will disappear because we have inexpensive websites like Flickr to show off the content.“
Interesting, isn’t it? That idea of “My Portal”, or mashups might just mean that personal sites are a simple page that links to all the different web services I’ve cherry-picked, that suit me. I’m curious about the teeny web services like FireEagle, that only do one or two things, and very simply. Also curious about the idea that I, a non-programmer, might be able to tie different web services together without needing to write code (or maybe just a little bit, but no server administration please!). That’s exciting!
Also interesting to think about that in the context of Ryan’s comment about influencing extended communities. I’d say you’re better off releasing that influence as much as you can, just because there are almost infinite mashing possibilities. Certainly, you’ll have no control over what things look like, so you may as well just give that up right now :)
An interesting peek into Flickr’s history can be found by reading an “interview”:http://www.adaptivepath.com/ideas/essays/archives/000519.php with Eric Costello in 2005. He mentions Game Neverending, but also something called Flickr Live which I hadn’t heard about before. What is it? Read the interview to find out! Fascinating stuff!
Community can make things bigger. We discuss various thing with others like blog, forums and when people join your discussion that makes the matter important and popular and more and more people start joining your discussion and that makes good healthy community.
Flickr has been a wonderful home for our community of “Blind Photographers (Blind Photographers on Flickr) “:http://www.flickr.com/groups/blind_photographers/. I created the group a few years ago wondering if I were the only visually impaired person using a camera. Now we have a group of 115 members, half of which are active. Not only to we share photography, but discuss vision issues and camera accessibility tips. We are currently doing a project to discuss how visual impairment affects our photography.
I do not think another site would have brought us all together. The main social sites like Facebook and Myspace are not friendly to this type of group. Dedicated sites just get lost in the vastness of cyber space.
Thanks to all you folks at flickr for doing what you have done.
PS If you would like advice on making flickr more accessible to the blind and visually impaired, all of us in “Blind Photographers (Blind Photographers on Flickr) “:http://www.flickr.com/groups/blind_photographers/ would love to help
I
22 Reader Comments
Back to the ArticleGeorge Oates
Wow – Thank you for all your thoughtful comments. It’s lovely to hear that you enjoyed the article! I wanted to address a couple of things directly…
Richard said
“I wonder if, in the described Flickr groups, you observe a small group of people who contribute a lot of comments and photos and a large group who contribute a lot less.“
Yes, I’m sure that’s often the case, particularly when people are finding their feet within a new group of people. It depends a bit on the sort of group too, I think. I’ve observed a certain cycle on Flickr several times which I think is fascinating. An example is where someone might post to our Help Forum asking a question (or being angry about something!), and then I’ll see that same person actually being helpful in some of the other threads! I think what often happens in groups is that some members will participate and engage more deeply than others, and often end up being “promoted” to a moderator or an admin.
Nielsen’s theory about lurking really just mirrors the way we are offline, doesn’t it? Not everyone’s an extrovert or an exhibitionist.
Charles said
“Isn’t that the essence of this whole “˜internet’ thing?!?“
Absolutely! We the People of the Internet have always known that, but I think it’s a relatively new realisation for the megacorps and broadcasters out there :)
“I think the analogy can even be expanded further, Flickr as an institution on the internet, even the beginnings of a visual processing (occipital) “˜lobe’ of the internet. Each portion of the “˜society’ acts to contribute, aggregate, processe, etc. the inputs from the edge of the network and therefore adds their own value to it.“
What a wonderful thing to say!! I think I love you!
Chris said
“Maybe I should organise a meet!“
I’d highly recommend that. Flickr meets are great! There are lots happening all over the world, a sample of which you can see over in “the Flickr group on Upcoming”:http://upcoming.yahoo.com/group/8/.
Douglas said
”…and leave us with the rather elliptical suggestion that “identity and connections appear to have social value”?. That doesn’t explain any actual suspicion, though, and I’d be very interested in your take on where this suspicion comes from.“
(This could probably fill a whole other article.)
Apologies for the ellipsis – I thought it was particularly hard to quantify that concept, so made a slightly cheeky assertion rather than stating a hard fact.
One of the most powerful things about Flickr, I think, is that it allows us to see true lives and actual people. Certainly there is a huge artistic vein to the content, but there are also many, many life stories and often gritty realities. Perhaps it’s as if there’s a “you show me yours and I’ll show you mine” thing going on. Perhaps it’s that people who don’t engage and share after a while aren’t “joining in.”
Lori said
“in a smaller, growing community, how do we make sure trolls don’t set up shop and dominate the conversation?“
You need to concentrate and be present. If someone comes by and makes waves, you’re well within your rights to weed them out. It’s like that annoying dude at your party who’s hitting on all the chicks and generally being a dork. No harm in asking him to leave…
Richard A. said
“hmm how do I add this user as a contact? where is that link again!? dang flicker interface..“
Wily, isn’t it? (You can add someone as a contact a few different ways: by mousing over their buddy icon, clicking on the little arrow that pops up and choosing “Add as a contact”, or by heading for their profile and clicking “Add x as a contact.” Totally acknowledge this could be easier, fwiw.)
Chris H. said
“I then wrote a few lines of CSS and made a custom stylesheet that could be applied to Flickr automatically by the browser.“
Fantastic! I must mention my very favourite Greasemonkey hack… An Englishman named Pip wrote a little script to “change the spelling”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/pip/59343912/ of “favorite” to the Queen’s English spelling, “favourite” :)
There are “loads of hacks like this”:http://www.flickr.com/search/?ss=1&w=all&q=greasemonkey+screenshot+flickr&m=text… though maybe “hacks” is the wrong word. Perhaps “enhancements” is better.
“It’s interesting how negative the reaction has been to [video] on Flickr. So much for the community spirit of love. This could be a good example of how a community fights change introduced by its creators.“
Yes, agreed. You could say that the negativity is also a sign of love, that people feel such passion for the place and feel protective of it. Interestingly, there was also a “backlash against the backlash” over video on Flickr, where other members helped to assuage fears, poke fun or stay the course with video. We knew it was a big change – absolutely – but we also knew that it was going to be a lot of fun, opening up new channels for creativity and documentation – a position we felt confident we could defend. And you’re right, there’s some wonderful stuff coming online, which you can get a taste of over in “the Video! Video! Video! Flickr group”:http://flickr.com/groups/video/pool/ …
Yay!
George Oates
Damn ascii – Sorry – I’ll try to clean that up :/
Thomas Kindig
I come from a different background and experience in terms of exposure to people and their expectations. Consider yourself blessed with a pleasing creative experience. You have enjoyed a self-selecting creative audience.
My work has been in Department of Defense and Financial services areas. Here you meet a completely different kind of user. This user is frustrated if there is not ONE CLEAR WAY to locate what they want or effect a certain action. They have a checklist mentality, and their expectations are formed by previous experience, even when that experience is not necessarily related to your application paradigm. It can be a real challenge to make a web page look like the financials page of the WSJ. And you may have to do this even when you know that usability will suffer.
I have encountered people who are not just frustrated but actually offended by design decisions which have been tested against a significant group of users.
This does not mean that they will not adapt. However the pace of change and choices made must be carefully thought out so as not to alienate these users. Things that are easily apparent to the creative user who is engaged and willing to invest a little time in an adventure—may well lead this user to judge your work as “Crap”.
Ryan Teuscher
As “flickr becomes about uptime, speed, and flexibility—almost detaching the things we build from the content itself and people’s interaction with it.” In terms of community, would it seem that services like our site (http://www.boingboing.net/2008/03/19/compfight-powerful-s.html), born out of a niche that flickr may not fill, represent the new direction for the flickr community? This is obviously not flickr’s core, but hey, you guys nailed it, nobody else in this market space has come close… What do you do now?
Your providing efficient tools for extending the core of flickr through the API. How do you see flickr interacting with the extended communities and fostering your own growth from now, on? Do you attempt to shape these extended communities with the same goals that you mentioned aided in flickrs initial growth? Do you simply add more media types, there by extending through the use of existing infrastructure? i.e. videos
Paul Sanders
This article makes me thankful that there are still people in the world who design with hospitality in mind. It gets at the heart of what people yearn for on the web, a place that makes them feel comfortable and treats them as a person while providing them the simple, elegant tools to do what they need and interact. There’s simple rules to being a great host, on and offline, and those who master those rules have the best parties. Great job.
Chris McKee
Flickr’s a fantastic tool, we use it for our personal photos and even as a way of sharing photos with 3rd party design agencies. With the privacy controls we can choose who will view our images and for £24 we get two years of unlimited storage and bandwidth; much more economical then hosting it ourselves.
It’s a great community (much more fun then Facebook) has a fantastic feature set and offers more and more every time I visit.
It has also provided another portal to find Creative Commons licence imagery.
So form a commercial front and personal front flickr is a community to love; its a great design and coding of the quality you’d expect more from our friends at Google.
Anyhoo that’s starting to sound like an advert.
Raise your glasses to the site that continues to engage its community and gives without asking.
Cara Pinle
I have been a member of Flickr for a couple of years but haven’t discovered the functions much, yet. I have been trying similar websites but Flickr is the one I keep coming back to upload my photos. People say personal websites will disappear because we have inexpensive websites like Flickr to show off the content.
“”¦I worked hard to make the site seem as if there was a person behind the screen talking to you. As we churned out pages to piece the site together, I obsessed about copy all over the place to make Flickr sound human.”?
I think this is what we have been trying to do especially since E-commerce websites became popular. The information and products suppliers are trying to provide services which they need to add value to differentiate them from their competitors. The higher point of services for example, is where users can shop things as if he is at an actual shop getting advised or informed face-to-face.
It is possible 10 years from now, we may use or discover the “computer”? in a totally different way and we deal with a person behind a webcam or projected hologram. The way of providing online services may totally change. Flickr’s friendly words are one of these steps for future. I had been involved with a sharing-content —website before. The actual copy on the site, as well as having a black or while background, were some of the larger issues we had to address.
lee doolan
,——
| Amy Franceschini is one of my favorite artists. In 2002, she created a
| sculpture called Game for the Masses, her “Intro to Game Theory.”? In
| game play, players distribute all the “pucks”? evenly. Whoever
| manages to collect all the pucks wins. That’s it.
`——
You make it sound like poker
George Oates
Thomas said “My work has been in Department of Defense and Financial services areas. Here you meet a completely different kind of user. This user is frustrated if there is not ONE CLEAR WAY to locate what they want or effect a certain action.“
Certainly. The trick with large, information-heavy sites designed from within the organization is that you often end up with impenetrable systems that only a mother could love. I tried to pay a parking ticket on the Californian Department of Motor Vehicles site the other day, and it took me a while to work out where to do it, when I would have thought this is a) a pretty common task, and b) a money earner!
Even though Flickr sets a certain tone, and is a fairly free-flowing place, we’ve also tried very hard to make the “micro-interactions”, like changing an email address or adding a tag very direct and clear. This sort of effort can happen in any system, whether it’s a fun place to be, or not.
“I have encountered people who are not just frustrated but actually offended by design decisions which have been tested against a significant group of users.“
Funnily enough, that actually happens on Flickr too, every time we release a new feature! It’s probably change more than anything else that people react to. Who knows? If there was focus on interaction design on every site, perhaps there would be less frustration? ;)
Ryan said “How do you see flickr interacting with the extended communities and fostering your own growth from now, on?“
Good question! Hard to answer though, if you consider Flickr to be more of a vessel than anything else. I mean, Flickr itself doesn’t really interact with anything. Certainly, the “web” around Flickr will grow and expand, as content squirts all over the place, but I guess whether Flickr has influence over directing that growth is the interesting bit. I’d say Flickr is practically agnostic in that regard. We have guidelines about how to make use of the API, and guidelines about how to participate on Flickr itself. Apart from that, it’s really up to you how and when you share content from Flickr in other places.
“Do you attempt to shape these extended communities with the same goals that you mentioned aided in flickr’s initial growth?“
Not really, no. We try to allow people to share as they see fit. That’s possibly helped the proliferation and growth of the “Flickrverse” outside the edges of flickr.com.
When you decide you’re going to open the gates and let the data you host out on to the web, you have to make sure that a) you and your team are prepared, and b) that you respect your members’ right to opt out if they’re not into it.
Paul Thank you! Try throwing a “bacon camp” party! (With actual bacon!)
Chris Cheers!
Cara said “People say personal websites will disappear because we have inexpensive websites like Flickr to show off the content.“
Interesting, isn’t it? That idea of “My Portal”, or mashups might just mean that personal sites are a simple page that links to all the different web services I’ve cherry-picked, that suit me. I’m curious about the teeny web services like FireEagle, that only do one or two things, and very simply. Also curious about the idea that I, a non-programmer, might be able to tie different web services together without needing to write code (or maybe just a little bit, but no server administration please!). That’s exciting!
Also interesting to think about that in the context of Ryan’s comment about influencing extended communities. I’d say you’re better off releasing that influence as much as you can, just because there are almost infinite mashing possibilities. Certainly, you’ll have no control over what things look like, so you may as well just give that up right now :)
Lee said “You make it sound like poker.“
Heh. Don’t tell anyone.
Chris Hester
An interesting peek into Flickr’s history can be found by reading an “interview”:http://www.adaptivepath.com/ideas/essays/archives/000519.php with Eric Costello in 2005. He mentions Game Neverending, but also something called Flickr Live which I hadn’t heard about before. What is it? Read the interview to find out! Fascinating stuff!
kaleem ullah hashmi
Community can make things bigger. We discuss various thing with others like blog, forums and when people join your discussion that makes the matter important and popular and more and more people start joining your discussion and that makes good healthy community.
Tim O'Brien
Flickr has been a wonderful home for our community of “Blind Photographers (Blind Photographers on Flickr) “:http://www.flickr.com/groups/blind_photographers/. I created the group a few years ago wondering if I were the only visually impaired person using a camera. Now we have a group of 115 members, half of which are active. Not only to we share photography, but discuss vision issues and camera accessibility tips. We are currently doing a project to discuss how visual impairment affects our photography.
I do not think another site would have brought us all together. The main social sites like Facebook and Myspace are not friendly to this type of group. Dedicated sites just get lost in the vastness of cyber space.
Thanks to all you folks at flickr for doing what you have done.
PS If you would like advice on making flickr more accessible to the blind and visually impaired, all of us in “Blind Photographers (Blind Photographers on Flickr) “:http://www.flickr.com/groups/blind_photographers/ would love to help
I