For me the payoff @ flickr (or my blog and website for that matter) is simply a way to share my work faster and more broadly that ever possible before.

Competing for attention not for direct monetary reward – but to learn from others and to teach others. The learning can be converted $$ as my skills improve and to the extent I help others, as in any network, they help me by offering not only encouragement, but a stream of tasty problems to solve which in turn directs my learing (ultimately) in economically useful ways.

Of course there is the spam, those only out to maximized their “interestingness”, and crazies – but that aside the web and _purposeful_ social networking in particular are the basis for the next human renaissance.

Thomas – I have seen your work on Flickr and admire it. Keep shooting!

Cheers,
Paul

I’ve been following blogging for a while and have just recently begun my own.

What are your thoughts about blogging someone else’s public photos from Flickr? Is it necessary to ask permission everytime?

Up until now, my answer was no with the rationale that if people didn’t want their pictures shared, they wouldn’t make them public. What do you think?

And what about in the case of blogging personally but contributing to a commerical media outlet?

Thanks for the very thought provoking post. The first time I encountered these issues was reading the writings of Eric Raymond where he explains how a gift culture makes open source software development work so effectively.

Personally in the case of Flickr I think that even more than other online communities people are very good about leaving feedback and comments, faving photos, etc. It is one of the stronger more interactive online efforts I’ve seen.

That depends on the definition of attention.

I’ve been giving this whole topic a lot of thought lately. It started with me not finding anything compelling behind the effort required for “social bookmarking”. I have a lot of ideas about all of it that I just cannot find the time to piece together into an article. I have a job which doesn’t involve pontificating in my blog or in comments like this.

Attention in the form of article hits is irrelevant to me. What IS relevant to me, is what you’ve hit on Thomas. Interaction with people, even if it’s critical interaction. Nobody wants to talk to a wall. Nobody wants to expend energy and time to offer something to the internet community, time and time again, only to be met with silence. Well, unless the person is just grossly self-important and likes hearing him/herself talk.

Caterina’s words are a bit much for me to swallow as written. Maybe I’m reading too much into her dramatic style of writing in this case. I’m not big on foof.

I have been a part of the internet every single day since 1992.

I configured and ran NCSA httpd 0.x in 1993. I wrote my first internet-visible HTML 2 days after that.

I contributed a crappy terminal based user interface to the ‘archie’ command sometime in 1994.

I wrote an internal memo to the non-profit I was working for, in 1994, about this company being formed “Netscape Communications” – specifically how their idea for encrypted web transactions was going to cause commerce over the internet to explode and that it was something we could make use of for quite a few of our services. It was ignored. Oh well.

I have taken *my* time to submit a large amount of bug reports to open-source projects from 1992 to today. I was downloading (and submitting bug reports for) Linux 0.97 onto 30 floppy disks in 1992.

I’m the first person to take *my* time out to let people know of dead links or typos on their websites. By the way, your link to Caterina’s website on the right sidebar has a spurious ‘h’ at the front.

I have written and released no less than 4 fairly unique complete applications to the open source world. One of these, in 1996, was 99% IDENTICAL to what we now know as Textile/Markdown. Oh well.

I’ve spent truly countless hours offering my different perspective to conversations between people with open minds (with no ego-driven motive).

I’ve contributed articles recently to several productivity-related sites.

I could just keep going on and on. Really.

The only thing short of money that makes any of it worthwhile is the RARE acknowledgment I receive in the form of correspondence from people.

“Hey, I’m still using your XYZ from 1996 and it hasn’t flinched. Thanks.”

“I read your article and [insert thoughtful critical or agreeable reply here]“

The problem is, the majority of the internet’s travelers these days a) take it all for granted and b) are too strapped for time due to what they’ve made their life to stop for a second and acknowledge something or share their thoughts. That sounds negative, but I don’t feel negatively about it. It is what it is. It’s an atmosphere. It’s what I happen to see as the reality for the most part.

Now, I realize I’m sort of all over the road here in this long comment.

I guess my point is this: Ignoring the online business aspect of it, the internet *IS* people. Every amount of success found in sites like Flickr *IS PEOPLE*. It will be absolutely fascinating to watch over the next year as more and more “Web 2.0″*GAG* companies try to form business models based on the idea that people have gross amounts of time and motivation to contribute content to sites where their contributions aren’t acknowledged in any SIGNIFICANT way. I think this notion that people are just chomping at the bit to piddle away several hours a week for the reward of “I did that and it’s on the net!” … along with N million other people in the crowd, is doomed to failure. It gets OLD and people wake up.

Let me ask you this. When’s the last time you truly paid any attention to the name of a book reviewer on Amazon.com, even if they were a top reviewer? I sure as hell don’t. I’m sure that’ll be a strong point on their resume toward a writing job in a few years and it’ll all work out…