Ludicorp was a company, based in
Vancouver, British Columbia
Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...
, Canada, that created
Flickr
Flickr ( ; ) is an American image hosting and video hosting service, as well as an online community, founded in Canada and headquartered in the United States. It was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and was a popular way for amateur and professional ...
and Game Neverending. It was founded in 2002 by
Stewart Butterfield
Daniel Stewart Butterfield (born Dharma Jeremy Butterfield; March 21, 1973) is a Canadian billionaire businessman, best known for co-founding the photo-sharing website Flickr and the team-messaging application Slack.
Early life and education
In ...
,
Caterina Fake
Caterina Fake is an American entrepreneur and businesswoman. She co-founded the websites Flickr in 2004 and Hunch in 2007. Fake has been a trustee for nonprofit organizations and was the chairwoman of Etsy. For her role in creating Flickr, Fake ...
and Jason Classon and was bought by
Yahoo!
Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Man ...
on March 20, 2005.
Ludicorp's structure
Team
Their team consisted of:
*
Stewart Butterfield
Daniel Stewart Butterfield (born Dharma Jeremy Butterfield; March 21, 1973) is a Canadian billionaire businessman, best known for co-founding the photo-sharing website Flickr and the team-messaging application Slack.
Early life and education
In ...
, President
*Jason Classon, Operations Lead
*Eric Costello, Client Development Lead
*
Caterina Fake
Caterina Fake is an American entrepreneur and businesswoman. She co-founded the websites Flickr in 2004 and Hunch in 2007. Fake has been a trustee for nonprofit organizations and was the chairwoman of Etsy. For her role in creating Flickr, Fake ...
, VP Marketing and Community
*Craig Johannsen, Server Development Lead
*
Cal Henderson
Callum James Henderson-Begg (born 17 January 1981), known as Cal Henderson, is a British computer programmer and author based in San Francisco.
Education
Henderson attended Sharnbrook Upper School and Community College, and Birmingham City Un ...
, Web Development Lead
*Paul Lloyd, Developer
*
George Oates
George Oates (birth name Georgina Oates, born 1973) is an Australian-born designer and entrepreneur, best known for being the first designer of the photo-sharing website Flickr and for creating the Flickr Commons program. Since 2007 she has worke ...
, Producer
*
Ben Cerveny, Game Designer and Advisor
Advisory board
*
Cory Doctorow
Cory Efram Doctorow (; born July 17, 1971) is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who served as co-editor of the blog ''Boing Boing''. He is an activist in favour of liberalising copyright laws and a proponent of ...
*Andrew Zolli
*
Clay Shirky
Clay Shirky (born 1964) is an American writer, consultant and teacher on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies and journalism.
In 2017 he was appointed Vice Provost of Educational Technologies of New York University (NYU), aft ...
Founding
Background
Stewart Butterfield, one founder of Ludicorp earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy in 1996 from the
University of Victoria
The University of Victoria (UVic or Victoria) is a public research university located in the municipalities of Oak Bay and Saanich, British Columbia, Canada. The university traces its roots to Victoria College, the first post-secondary instit ...
. and then went on to earn a master's degree in philosophy from the
University of Cambridge
, mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts.
Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge.
, established =
, other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...
shortly after.
He also earned a master's degree in history from the University of Cambridge.
Butterfield says his choice in degree, although uncommon for a
STEM
Stem or STEM may refer to:
Plant structures
* Plant stem, a plant's aboveground axis, made of vascular tissue, off which leaves and flowers hang
* Stipe (botany), a stalk to support some other structure
* Stipe (mycology), the stem of a mushro ...
CEO, has benefited him in management and running businesses.
Following this, he became a part of Jason Classon's start up business Gradfinder.com, which they would end up selling.
Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield met as web designers living in
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
and Vancouver respectively when they met.
Fake moved to Vancouver and the two got married, starting Ludicorp with Classon, just after their honeymoon.
Fake says that the inspiration for the name Ludicorp came from the Latin word ludus, meaning play, as they are working on an online game, Game Neverending.
Early operations
Shortly following Ludicorp's founding, Butterfield, Classon and Fake began working on Game Neverending.
According to Fake “
hedid the game design, Stewart did the interaction design and Jason did the
PHP
PHP is a general-purpose scripting language geared toward web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementation is now produced by The PHP Group ...
for the prototype.”
During the time they were developing Game Neverending, Ludicorp were able to secure a government loan and began to break even shortly later.
Fake expressed how raising funds for Flickr however was difficult as it was a new concept, including many new features in the new social media market.
Development of Game Neverending
According to Fake, “
Neopets
''Neopets'' is a virtual pet website. Users can own virtual pets ("Neopets") and buy virtual items for them using one of two virtual currencies. One currency, called Neopoints, can be earned within the site, and the other, Neocash, can eithe ...
was one of the inspirations for Game Neverending,” a game where online multiplayer interaction was available.
It was meant to be a game that would not end, and there was no concept of winning or losing in it.
Game Neverending was finished and released in 2002, however it did not gain the success Ludicorp had wanted it to. Game Neverending eventually became Ludicorp's major project, Flickr.
Fake said that many in Ludicorp were disappointed to forgo Game Neverending, but they also realised that Flickr was a rising source of success for them.
Development of Flickr
Game Neverending contained a feature which would allow players to communicate and share photographs with each other.
However, all the technical features used to create this function were also the fundamental features of Flickr.
After Game neverending became a financial failure, the Ludicorp executives then decided to drop that project and pursue Flickr, especially as it was beginning to gain financial success in 2004.
Flickr's first version was built in 8 weeks, as Ludicorp already had the necessary technology and software from Game Neverending.
It was essentially a social networking site, allowing users to post and share pictures they had taken, without any help from professional companies.
Its fast growth was pushed by the increasing popularity of social networking sites, such as
YouTube
YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...
and the increasing availability of smartphones with built in cameras.
Although many users were professional photographers, Flickr was aimed at those who found photography as a hobby.
According to Fake, herself and Butterfield were both bloggers in their spare time and this was beneficial for them when creating the site.
Ludicorp created Flickr in a way that it filled a hole in the market; other competitors did not allow bloggers to post pictures.
Ludicorp also added many first ever features in Flickr, such as “authing in,” being able to change the amount of information you share with your friends and activity streams.
Ludicorp also designed Flickr to be more focused on content, rather than as a social interaction site, unlike a platform such as
Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...
.
Users can follow other users in a non-mutual subscription model, like YouTube.
Furthermore, content can be viewed without the subscription, another first for social media sites in 2004.
Fake said that they allowed this as at the time publicly viewable content was not a feature on other social media platforms.
According to Fake, Flickr “turned the tide for Ludicorp,” as with the failure of Game Neverending, the company was struggling.
By the end of 2004 Flickr was worth approximately US$25 million.
This led to many companies having interest in acquiring Ludicorp, one such company being Yahoo!.
Acquisition by Yahoo!
At the end of 2004, Butterfield, Fake and Classon sold Ludicorp to Yahoo!.
However, Butterfield also has admitted to selling the company too early,
as many fans and users of
twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
considered Yahoo! to be a poor owner.
Following the acquisition, Fake and Classon left, with Butterfield following two years later in 2007 after having his second child and divorcing from Fake.
In a memoir he sent to Brad Garlinghouse, announcing his resignation he said he felt “sidelined” by Yahoo! and did not have as much of a say in his company anymore.
In the years that Yahoo! owned Ludicorp, its main product Flickr peaked and then began to decline, with other social media networks taking over,
such as
Instagram
Instagram is a photo and video sharing social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. The app allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters and organized by hashtags and geographical tagging. Posts can ...
and
Snapchat
Snapchat is an American multimedia instant messaging app and service developed by Snap Inc., originally Snapchat Inc. One of the principal features of Snapchat is that pictures and messages are usually only available for a short time before the ...
.
Furthermore, as Yahoo! did not focus on the development of Flickr it became difficult to monetize becoming unprofitable for Ludicorp and Yahoo!.
Realising this, Yahoo! sold Flickr to
SmugMug
SmugMug is a paid image sharing, image hosting service, and online video platform on which users can upload photos and videos. The company also facilitates the sale of digital and print media for amateur and professional photographers. On April ...
,
causing Ludicorp to lose its main product. Although Ludicorp no longer owns Flickr as Yahoo! sold the product, not the company.
References
External links
*{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/*/www.ludicorp.com, date=*, title=Ludicorp
Canadian companies established in 2002
Software companies established in 2002
2002 establishments in British Columbia
Software companies of Canada
Yahoo! acquisitions
Companies based in Vancouver
2005 mergers and acquisitions