Flickr Co-Founder Caterina Fake on the Value of Viral Loops
fastcompany.com
fastcompany.com
I think tagging is best when people tag items that aren't theirs. Otherwise they are inclined to abuse it as a distribution mechanism. If tagging well-served photos, then why do they have Groups Sets Collections, etc? Hmph.
I also disagree that tagging was responsible for flickr's success.
(2001, not 2004 for creating it, incidentally.)
What I found interesing is that she underlines the fact that Flickr has been (is) very popular because of special circonstances, the fact that digital cameras began to be cheap and widespread, more and more people blogging...
It seems like Flickr became successful in a large part because of a lot of luck.
It sounds agonizing.
In my opinion the aquisition didn't benefit the Flickr project very much (for the users), I have the feeling that it is stagnating right now.
In general I also find the management interface a bit awkward. Perhaps a few weekend of kill a feature are needed. I think they've tried to be all things to a rather diverse user group and have suffered b/c of it.
It's still fantastic though!