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Flickr

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Flickr Community Managrs

As a huge fan and early adopter of Flickr, the online photo sharing community, as well as also being tasked with managing a large online community myself, I found this article about community managers at Flickr interesting:

At first glance this parallel society has been made, quite literally, in the image of our own. But in truth it's more like a Photoshopped image -- the nice parts accentuated, the inappropriate bits cropped away. So it goes with any online community, of course. Behavior must be moderated and a communal ethos must be preserved; Wild West cliches aside, total freedom at any entity like this would sink it in a storm of lawsuits, flame wars and gridlocked cacophony. So directors of community exist. And while the job of nurturing and policing any online realm would make for a fascinating study, I was particularly curious about how it worked at Flickr.

Director of Community Heather Champ doesn't just guard the pool and blow the occasional whistle; it's a far more delicate, and revealing, dance that keeps the user population here happy, healthy and growing. In addressing that question of how much to police and how much to let things be, Champ oversees an experiment that, outside some far-flung and sandy exceptions, one rarely sees in such detail.

I've believed in this website and the product from the very beginning and it's really satisfying for me to see it grow into a vibrant and engaging community. I'm glad to see that its merger into Yahoo has been relatively positive, although I'm still bitter at having to give up my original login for a Yahoo one instead. Boo to that.

Their programmers in particular are top notch, so if any of ya'll read this: Thanks for making the site products so usable!

Read rest here.

[Via]

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SMITHSONIAN ON FLICKR

The Smithsonian Institute, the world's "largest museum and research complex" as well as the repository of our nation's historical artifacts, has joined the Flickr community. They are uploading an initial number of around 900 photographs.

Only a very small percentage of our photographs presently exist in digital form, and many have not been fully researched and described. The photos you see here are a sample of the more than 13 million images in some seven hundred collections in our museums, archives, and research centers. These collections contain photographs collected from outside sources in addition to those taken by Smithsonian staff, and represent a broad range of subjects and themes in the fields of art, history, culture, and science.

This is a really savvy initiative on Smithsonian's part. There's a lot of good stuff there like this image of a mail carrier delivering a freakin' child:

Read more here and check out the rest of the Smithsonian Flickr images.

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THE DEPARTED: FLICKR FOUNDERS

Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield, the husband and wife team who co-founded Flickr (my favorite photo and now video hosting community), which was purchased by Yahoo in 2005 for $35 million, are leaving their baby--prematurely in my opinion.  I was there when this site first appeared on my nerdar in 2004, and since then it has been my blogging partner in crime. This is one property (and maybe their fantasy sports leagues) in the Yahoo portfolio that is superior to anything that Google has been able to offer. This said, I'm always interested in the next thing around the corner, so let me know if there's a better website out there than Flickr. I had a conversation with Kaizar recently where we were discussing the issue of Yahoo and in particular how being part of that dysfunctional family might be impacting Flickr. I guess news of Fake and Butterfield's departure gives us some insight into that question.

Here is Butterfield's pretty bizarre and far-out alleged resignation letter.

Read more here.

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IS THIS THE MOST TAGGED PHOTO ON TEH INTERNETS?

I first saw this on the ever informational blog Kottke (although I've never quite dang figured out how to pronounce it). For those of you unaware of Flickr, which is a great photo hosting website and community, you can "tag" any photo on Flickr and make a comment about that portion of the photo. This feature is most often used by Kevin whenever he sees a cute girl in a photo that I've uploaded. Kevin tags them with a note that asks me "Who be this girl?" Anyway, check out how many times people have tagged this Flickr photo:

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