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]
Stewart Butterfield, a founder of Ludicorp, earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy in 1996 from the University of Victoria and then went on to earn master's degrees in philosophy and in history from the University of Cambridge.[6][7] Butterfield says his choice in degree, although uncommon for a STEM CEO, has benefited him in management and running businesses.[7] He then 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 were 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.[9] Game Neverending eventually became Ludicorp's major project, Flickr.[10]
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 decided to drop that project and pursue Flickr, as it was beginning to gain financial success in 2004.[4]
Flickr's first version was built in 8 weeks using the technology and software from Game Neverending.[4] It was 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] 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] At that time, publicly viewable content was not a feature on other social media platforms.[4]
By the end of 2004 Flickr was worth approximately US$25 million.[8] This led to Yahoo! becoming interested in acquiring Ludicorp.[4]
At the end of 2004, Butterfield, Fake and Classon sold Ludicorp to Yahoo!.[8] 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,[12] such as Instagram and Snapchat.[13] Yahoo! did not focus on the development of Flickr and it became unprofitable for Ludicorp and Yahoo!.[12] Yahoo! sold Flickr to SmugMug,[13] causing Ludicorp to lose its main product.