23 is too much like Flickr

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1. Jacob
   

   November 28th, 2005 at 1:37 am

   I’m actually quite impressed at how 23 have managed to clone the Flickr API too (it may be well documented but it’s not exaactly simple), which is I think a clever move as technically *all* (if not most) of the existing Flickr applications would work with it after a simple hostname change.

   To call the 23 interface a clone however would be slightly misleading as the look is quite different and functional differences make it its own service. Plus they’ve got a novel and exceptionally easy to use feature called ’stories’.

2. Razvan Antonescu
   

   November 28th, 2005 at 1:44 am

   Don’t get this :

   “since 23 is located in Europe they will have an easier time getting users there, where Flickr does not have the market penetration.”

   Just because we live in the old continenet doesn’t mean we aren’t using US products. Flickr is quite popular here and the only downside is that in some eastern countries it’s quite impossible to pay for the service even though is more then affordable

3. dusoft
   

   November 28th, 2005 at 2:03 am

   Hah, that’s funny you think in terms of geographic regions on the internet - common, you can do better.

4. Thomas Madsen-Mygdal
   

   November 28th, 2005 at 3:20 am

   I’m one of the founders of 23 and just wanted to make sure you understand what we’re doing.

   - We’re one of many photo sharing services (we counted more than 500 globally at last count). Photo sharing is a huge need globally and all though the blogosphere is obsessed with flickr for many good reasons it probably only counts for 0,5-1% of the global market - if even that high. Our “target” never has been flickr users, but the 80-90% of people with digital camera’s still stuck with no or poor tools for sharing their photos. We’re actually pretty surprised that we’re seeing the level of people shifting from flickr to us.

   - Our service is, if you try it out, upload 20-30 photos - a lot different than flickr in all regards. From a built-in photo newsreader, our photo centric ui, our simple visual interface, our send/give photos to others, our open non-data silo thinking of linking of tags around the world, our local languages/local communities, our freedom to share the way you want, etc.

   - We’re in a field where there’s no pings to weblogs.com, there’s no technorati, there’s no decentalized communities/groups open to users from all photo sharing services, there’s no open standards for api’s (eg. flickrapi) - it’s all centralized on flickr. Flickr is currently the only place you can get collective sharing based on tags, etc. on a massive scale - a big factor in people using flickr (not just that they like the product more than other services). And in our minds that isn’t the reason people should be using one service. Separation of product from the commons/the network is our belief.

   - We’ve invested thousands of hours in design processes, if we just we’re out to copy flickr we would have done that in a week (like some chinese services have done).

   Yeah, we do have tags, yeah, we do have a top text navigation. Yes, we do have a blog/moblog oriented photo sharing. Yes, we do have support for posting to blogs through the metaweblog api. Yeah, we do have a basic free offering with a paid user model on top.
   But as you know yourself these elements we’re pioneered by respectively del.icio.us, basecamp, lots of bloggers/mobloggers, blogger/dave winer and lots of web services before.

   Flickr are the current darlings because of the un-earthly great execution of building an amazing web app. We salute them for that and for setting a very high bar in terms of competition.
   But labelling anyone else in the field as copycats i don’t consider fair and good for competition. We’re as different as wordpress is from movabletype, as movabletype is from blogger, as blogger is from manilla/radio.

   The field is wide open for more innovation - and especially for a more decentralized non-data silo photosphere where it’s possible for people to use the service that works for them and get the full benefit - not because they are evidently forced to use one specific service because of network effects.

   One would hope that “Web2.0″ is about ecosystems and not massive centralization like ebay. That it’s about a diversity of services hooking in to each other - and not a global monoculture of one service.

   Considering that i think your headline is a bit unfair and the term “clone” rather misleading.

5. Bob-i-Licious
   

   November 28th, 2005 at 5:05 am

   people. You want flickr? Pro but free? Ajax and web2.0 tasty and crunchy? You might want to have a look at ZOTO (www.zoto.com). it rocks and have all the noce features of F! (UL tools, blog roll…) and the team is quite responsive.

   GOGO! \

   bob

6. Jacob Levy
   

   November 28th, 2005 at 8:50 am

   The service that will provide an API for uploading and downloading images will win in this space. Even if the use of the API is thru subscription, there’s many many many possible applications that could leverage off of image storage. Heck, a few weeks ago you profiled a site that did automatic image tagging. If it didnt have to do image storage as well, that’d be better, right? And that’s just one application.. Many more are possible.

7. Anand
   

   November 28th, 2005 at 9:12 am

   I was having a look at Shutterbook the other day and it seems pretty interesting photo sharing site too.

8. Michael Arrington
   

   November 28th, 2005 at 9:22 am

   Thomas,

   Ok, you hooked me at “The field is wide open for more innovation - and especially for a more decentralized non-data silo photosphere where it’s possible for people to use the service that works for them and get the full benefit”.

9. Michael Arrington
   

   November 28th, 2005 at 9:27 am

   #2 & #3,

   If you look at Skype’s growth geographically, they penetrated Europe far more quickly than the US. Europeans like European companies. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just something to note.

   Mike

10. Tom
    

    November 28th, 2005 at 10:33 am

    I like the design of 23, it’s nice and simple and looks easier to navigate than flickr.

11. Johann
    

    November 28th, 2005 at 5:56 pm

    Too bad there’s no open API.

12. Jeff Clavier
    

    November 29th, 2005 at 3:31 am

    The service was previewed at the Innovate Europe conference last June, under the 23people brand: http://blog.softtechvc.com/200.....ope_1.html

    As a reminder Thomas, the founder of the co, is also organizing the great Reboot conference.

13. Ilike23
    

    May 11th, 2006 at 9:04 am

    Thanks for the post Thomas - I think your site is the best I’ve seen, other than ours, of course.

    I’ll hide behind a thin veil of anonymity here, but I will state that both Thomas and I wake up and go to the same job everyday - in different locations.

    There’s been something I’ve been wanting to get off my chest and that’s you Technorati need to stop already with the “look ma, it’s just like Flickr” crap!

    Only Flickr is like Flickr. The rest of the companies in this space are doing their own thing - and learning from others in the process. Don’t think for a minute that Flickr didn’t “borrow” concepts from other sites - the epaper thing for example. Stewart has even commented on occasion that he took the best ideas from others and implemented them in Flickr to make it better.

    Good for him. Flickr rocks. Flickr sold for lots o’ dough. Rah, rah, rah.

    However… This mentality of late with all you Technorati holding Flickr up as the only solution for hosting photos needs to stop. Talking about them every time someone tries to discuss another photo site needs to stop. Flickr isn’t the end all to be all of photo hosting sites. Webshots, for example, has 20x the number of images and probably 10x the numbers of users. They actually make money over there, and recently sold to CNet for a whopping $70M. Tons of normal, everyday people use Webshots. Why? Because it’s easy to use, and has been around forever.

    Are they like Flickr? Sure - if “being like Flickr” constitutes having users, photos, and comments on the photos.

    But they aren’t Flickr!

    Flickr does a lot of stuff right, but they also do a bunch of stuff wrong. Case in point, I’d challenge you to upload 10,000 photos to Flickr (if you could) and then organize and browse through all of them as quickly as you can with iPhoto. You can’t - and the reason why is because Flickr isn’t designed for that - it’s designed for sharing 100-1000 photos with lots-o-people online, and then starting conversations and groups around those photos.

    Is that a dig on Flickr? Hell no! It’s just something that you can’t do with their software. It illustrates that there is an opportunity for someone else to come in and provide that service.

    My plea to you blogging guys is to start reviewing sites for the sake of actually *reviewing* the site for others. You know, work and all. Telling us that a new company x is like company y, and here’s why I like y instead isn’t helping anyone. I challenge you to even bother trying to use the sites you review and post your thoughts up when you get done.

    Tell us what they are good at - not what they do that’s like someone else.