Annaliza E. Nebres

OOC

Case study 19

Caterina Fake

(Co Founder, Flickr)

Caterina Flake stated with Stewart Buttlefield and Jason Clason at Ludicorp. Their first product was the Game Neverending, a massively multiplayer online game with real-time interaction through instant messaging. With this product they added new features, a chat environment with photo sharing. Game Neverending tends to develop a new photo sharing community which called Flickr. It became popular and later was acquired by Yahoo in March 2005.

Stewart and Fake were married. They both do a web development at that time. Stewart was to do some type of transitional web Development Company which is a kind of harebrained scheme. But after their honeymoon they started Ludicorp. Ludicotp came from a Latin word “Lodus” which means “Play”, they built the Game Neverending. It was a light weight web-based game. It is based around social interactions. You could form groups, instant message and social Network associated with it. Neopets was one of the inspirations for Game Neverending. They have pets wherein you can trade things with other people in the game. Fake worked on the collaborative animation game which was a cousin to the Game Neverending idea.

Flickr was a side project. The Back-end development of the game fell really behind the Front-end Development. While catching up they built on instant messenger application which you can form little communities and shared objects like pictures. Flickr wasn’t really a project but a feature, in which you could drag and drop photos.  They decided to put photographs on a web page. Actually they wanted to create something new and not photo-sharing site. But they build that stuff. Photo sharing wasn’t a valuable activity that people would pay attention. But it became a big help for others. Stewart and Fake was also a long-time fan of bloggers. When they’re developing Flickr many networking services were coming onto the scenes like Friendster, MySpace and Tribes and also it is the rise of cameras. They combined Flickr and blog wherein the default is for it to be public photos  they need to put the Game Neverending onhold because of Flickr, they didn’t expect that will grew fast. They’re only six of them so they really need to do that. Unlike other startups some of the VCs were calling them just to invest, but they don’t need much money.

Flickr was really a big help because you can immediately download the photos and tag them. It is helpful for the important events. Fake and Stewart started with the Game Neverending but they end up with Flickr, a photo sharing site.

There are many things I’ve learn in Flickr, first, not only men have the rights or capability to start a startup but also women. They think that women will be a big disturbance but it isn’t. Most of the women are more passionate about their business. And be able to put their hearts and souls into it in a way men cannot. Second is, the things that you expected may never end up the way you want it to be. Like Flickr. They really enjoyed the game but they don’t have a choice but to hold it. Third is, you may never notice that your site serve and help other people.