 | |
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Software development |
| Founded | 2002 |
| Founder | Stewart Butterfield, Caterina Fake and Jason Classon |
| Headquarters | Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada |
| Website | www |
Ludicorp was a company based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, that created Flickr and Game Neverending. [1] [2] [3] It was founded in 2002 by Stewart Butterfield, Caterina Fake and Jason Classon and was bought by Yahoo! on March 20, 2005. [4] [5]
Their team consisted of:
Stewart Butterfield, one founder of Ludicorp earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy in 1996 from the University of Victoria. and then went on to earn a master's degree in philosophy from the University of Cambridge shortly after. [6] He also earned a master's degree in history from the University of Cambridge. [7] Butterfield says his choice in degree, although uncommon for a STEM CEO, has benefited him in management and running businesses. [7] Following this, he became a part of Jason Classon's start up business Gradfinder.com, which they would end up selling. [6]
Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield met as web designers living in San Francisco and Vancouver respectively when they met. [4] Fake moved to Vancouver and the two got married, starting Ludicorp with Classon, just after their honeymoon. [4] 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. [4]
Shortly following Ludicorp's founding, Butterfield, Classon and Fake began working on Game Neverending. [4] According to Fake “[She] did the game design, Stewart did the interaction design and Jason did the PHP for the prototype.” [4] During the time they were developing Game Neverending, Ludicorp were able to secure a government loan and began to break even shortly later. [4] 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. [4] [8]
According to Fake, “Neopets was one of the inspirations for Game Neverending,” a game where online multiplayer interaction was available. [4] It was meant to be a game that would not end, and there was no concept of winning or losing in it. [8] Game Neverending was finished and released in 2002, however it did not gain the success Ludicorp had wanted it to. [9] Game Neverending eventually became Ludicorp's major project, Flickr. [10]
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. [4]
Game Neverending contained a feature which would allow players to communicate and share photographs with each other. [4] However, all the technical features used to create this function were also the fundamental features of Flickr. [8] 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. [4]
Flickr's first version was built in 8 weeks, as Ludicorp already had the necessary technology and software from Game Neverending. [4] It was essentially a social networking site, allowing users to post and share pictures they had taken, without any help from professional companies. [11] Its fast growth was pushed by the increasing popularity of social networking sites, such as YouTube and the increasing availability of smartphones with built in cameras. [4] [11]
Although many users were professional photographers, Flickr was aimed at those who found photography as a hobby. [11] According to Fake, herself and Butterfield were both bloggers in their spare time and this was beneficial for them when creating the site. [4] Ludicorp created Flickr in a way that it filled a hole in the market; other competitors did not allow bloggers to post pictures. [8] 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. [8]
Ludicorp also designed Flickr to be more focused on content, rather than as a social interaction site, unlike a platform such as Facebook. [11] Users can follow other users in a non-mutual subscription model, like YouTube. [11] Furthermore, content can be viewed without the subscription, another first for social media sites in 2004. [11] Fake said that they allowed this as at the time publicly viewable content was not a feature on other social media platforms. [4]
According to Fake, Flickr “turned the tide for Ludicorp,” as with the failure of Game Neverending, the company was struggling. [4] By the end of 2004 Flickr was worth approximately US$25 million. [8] This led to many companies having interest in acquiring Ludicorp, one such company being Yahoo!. [4]
At the end of 2004, Butterfield, Fake and Classon sold Ludicorp to Yahoo!. [8] However, Butterfield also has admitted to selling the company too early, [8] as many fans and users of Twitter considered Yahoo! to be a poor owner. [12] Following the acquisition, Fake and Classon left, with Butterfield following two years later in 2007 after having his second child and divorcing from Fake. [8] 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. [8]
In the years that Yahoo! owned Ludicorp, its main product Flickr peaked and then began to decline, with other social media networks taking over, [13] such as Instagram and Snapchat. [12] Furthermore, as Yahoo! did not focus on the development of Flickr it became difficult to monetize becoming unprofitable for Ludicorp and Yahoo!. [13] Realising this, Yahoo! sold Flickr to SmugMug, [12] causing Ludicorp to lose its main product. Although Ludicorp no longer owns Flickr as Yahoo! sold the product, not the company. [12]
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