Fun with Flickr

[Click on title for link to the complete interview @ adaptive path]

Anyone linking here regularly can see that I am a great lover of Flickr. It is a really satisfying tool on several levels - professional and personal. I use it both as a way to post family images, as well as images I use in my studio work. I came across this interview between Eric Costello (the Client Development Lead for Flickr and a prominent web developer) and Jesse James Garrett (co-founder and Director of User Experience Strategy of Adaptive Path) - "user experience strategy" what a title!

What interested me was how quickly Flickr has developed (it is only 18 months old) and how the developers were seemingly as surprised and delighted as I am by how it has grown and is being used.

Garrett says: "...I would have thought that people would be most interested in their own little world – themselves, their friends, their family. But what happened was that once they got hooked on the site on that small scale, people wanted to see that big picture. They wanted to feel like participants in this larger community."

To which Costello replies: "...Yeah, that was definitely a surprise to us. Flickr was really envisioned initially as an organizational tool for an individual who has this huge collection of photos. The social network was built in just so that you could restrict access to your photos. But what has really taken off with Flickr is that it’s turned out to be a great platform for sharing with the masses, and not just with your small collection of friends."

Throughout the interview the terms neighborhood building, social network and interactions are all used. It is exhilirating to stand on the brink of this developing global network and examine all of the inherant possibilities.

And to think it began as an online game! Good read - take a look.