Month: June 2008

Logged into Facebook this morning after not having logged in there for a long while. My eyes started bleeding. Stop the madness Facebook, stop the madness.

You have to see this one large to see what I’m talking about.

Wait, what’s that you say about a "human pet invitation?" Hold on, I’ll be right back…

Learning from Flickr's Co-founders on Their Way Out of Yahoo – ReadWriteWeb Marshall Kirkpatrick has an insightful post over at ReadWriteWeb about yesterday’s big news in the photo sharing world, Flickr co-founders Stewart Butterield and Caterina Fake’s resignation from Yahoo!

Marshall talks about some of the initial glory that Yahoo! derived from acquiring Flickr and some of the lessons to be learned from Flickr’s success.

Marshall’s story is well written and spot on, but the more interesting story to me about Marshall’s piece is how he wrote it. Interestingly enough, Marshall turned to FriendFeed as a source to get quotes and comments (myself included) for his article. Because of the dynamic, almost instantaneous nature of FriendFeed, Marshall was able to quickly poll a number of different blogger/pundits and use their FriendFeed comments as quotes for his story. In addition to me, he also quotes Scoble and Winer. Varun Mahajan commented on Marshall’s post, “I see, where blogging is heading. You are in essence asking for blog pre-comments.”

Robert Scoble was also on FriendFeed earlier today announcing that he’s been able to schedule some interview time with U.S. Speaker of the House Nanci Pelosi in his upcoming trip to Washington DC. Immediately Scoble turned to FriendFeed and started getting a lot of feedback about the types of questions he should ask her.

It makes me wonder if this sort of use won’t become more widespread in the future. Already a few of the top mainstream print media reporters are building a presence on FriendFeed. Chris Nuttal who writes for the Financial Times as well as Jessica Guynn who writes for the Los Angeles Times both are active on the site. BBC Technology Editor Darren Waters also has an account on the site.

As I was writing this post live, I polled FriendFeed myself asking for who some of the other reporters and technology pundits on FriendFeed were. Louis Gray promptly responded back with a list of some of the top bloggers and “household names” that he’s compiled over at his blog. Talk about interactive blogging!

Certainly many in the mainstream media are already on Twitter, but I’m not sure that Twitter is organized as well as FriendFeed for conversations and the 140 character limitation limits meaty quotes that a blogger or journalist might print. FriendFeed might be better suited for this sort of use. It will be interesting to watch this sort of use and see if we don’t see more of it in the future.

PopPhoto Flash: Do Your Photos Need A Makeover? PopPhoto is running a contest where you submit a before and after photo of the same shot to show how much you can improve a shot. You can re-shoot the shot, use Photoshop, do whatever. The idea is to show how you turned your worst photo into an amazing photo.

Winner gets an Olympus Fe-250.

I know that for me, at least 50% of the value of my finished photos come from my processing. Many of my shots look downright terrible coming straight out of the camera. It will be interesting to see what they come up with re: before and after.

Speaking of before and after makeovers, if you haven’t seen this oldie but goodie Dove advertising campaign video showing both real makeup and Photoshop manipulation to define advertising beauty it’s a great one to check out.

Flickr Chief Stewart Butterfield

Flickr Co-founders Join Mass Exodus From Yahoo I wonder what this means for the future of Flickr?

My guess is that Fake and Butterfield had a three year lock up component as at least part of their deal when they sold Flickr to Yahoo back in 2005. That lock up would be ending right about last month.

Not sure how much of the reported $30-$35 million Flickr founders Butterfield and Fake pocketed in the sale to Yahoo in cash vs. stock, but if the deal stipulated that they had to hold Yahoo! stock over the course of the past three years, they would have given back significant value.

Three years ago Yahoo stock was trading at about $37 per share. Today it’s trading at $23.25, about 40% less than when Flickr sold to Yahoo originally.

Theoretically (and I’m sure that this is likely not the case) if Flickr sold to Yahoo for $30 million in stock in 2005 with a three year lock up on those shares, their shares in Yahoo would be worth $18 million today.

It looks like TechCrunch probably has this story right as there is a comment on their post by Butterfield:

“No need to worry about the future of Flickr – it’s well-protected from the uppings and downings of YHOO and will continue to be awesome. Kakul is actually better than me anyway — ask anyone on the team.”

Update: As much as it pains me to link to Valleywag, they do have the *best* Stewart Butterfield resignation letter of all time. If it’s true and all that, you know, Valleywag.

Hey wait. Maybe I don’t have to link to Valleywag at all. Maybe I can just rip off their letter and publish it here. After all, they’ve used plenty of my photos in the past without permission.

Anyways, Stewart’s reported letter of resignation to Yahoo. Pure brilliance if you ask me: