Fortune Favors The Bold

soupsoup:

I think undue praise comes from lazy journalists who simply are looking to affix their name to whatever the zeitgeist happens to be at the time. All of these people have done something impressive, but that doesn’t absolve them from criticism.

Agreed. It’s not relating exactly to what I said at first, but agreeable on all points.

I think you paint too broad a brush when you say these folks (aside from Denton) have gone unscathed. The more prominent you are, the bigger target you become. I think criticism is more often the norm than the exception so I find it odd that you feel these people have been unfairly praised. I’ve seen as much, if not more written about what they have done wrong instead of what they’ve done right.

I’m not even talking about their praise/criticism ratios, and I’m sure they take their lumps too. But why are they still being referenced at all? I think Denton and Newmark (barely) are still somewhat relevant, not the best examples, but the Flickr founders, the College Humor guys, Jeff Jarvis… come on, what have they really done to shape the modern web that hadn’t been figured out simultaneously by 1,000 other project leads? Therefore, why do people keep citing them as people you should follow?

To me, Caterina is just some web developer from SF. The stuff she says is just your basic run-of-the-mill social/interactive media evangelism. I’d love to read a Flickr post-mortem someday from her (the Flickr that existed before Yahoo! fired everyone) but I don’t care what she has to say about 2010 products - for credibility purposes, it’s not enough that she created a 2004 fad.

I agree with your assessment that often innovators get lazy and perhaps even arrogant. The product that was once state of the art is thought to be flawless and they scoff at the idea that it should be retooled. That simply opens the door for someone else to come along and use the groundwork that was provided, evolve it, improve it, and sell it as their own shiny new thing.

Well, worse, they sold out to a big evil corporation, and that was it right there. BOOM! End of the line. The body was kept warm for a while but the heart wasn’t beating. Is that a terrible thing to do? It was a great personal finance move for the founders! God bless them! But Flickr was sacrificed to the cash-out gods. And it wasn’t sustainable. Particularly, it was susceptible to the business problems of old marketing ideas. (Did those subscriber fees ever amount to profits that you could re-invest, not just skim? Was handing over a controlling stake to Yahoo! the only way to cash in on the market equity of the business? Why is the moderation on Flickr so awful?) Yahoo didn’t have to do much to murder it. But it should also be noted that it is, and has always been, a spectacularly bad collection of photography. Going aside for a bit: This is because people, more or less, were better rewarded by posting many many bad photos than they were for posting a few good ones. Also, you could get more praise and social approval for your bad photos on Flickr than if you posted them anywhere else on the net. Conversely, if you have really good photos or if you’re a working professional, Flickr — as a community and an application — offers a really underwhelming product, less than what you could get by rolling your own website. (the effusive praise for cheesy photos across the Flickr community is just the frosting on the boot tip to the face) And, even with a subscription, it’s not so manageable or share-friendly by 2008 standards. As a former 4-year pro subscriber, I know it well, and I think it’s no good.

Anyway, if Caterina puts “Flickr founder” on her resume, she should be held accountable for how it has fared. She is not. But she should also be considered as having a sketchy or bland track record SINCE her one-hit-wonder moment. And, since I keep seeing her name as if she signed the US Constitution, she is not.

But two final pieces of context:

• Again, it’s not her doing. I am sure that in her daily interactions in life, she is not overrated. (More likely that she is “properly rated”) Her ass-sniffers are infamous for sniffing everyone’s ass, like goofy dogs. Gotta love that SF tech scene!
• Closer-focused: I established quite clearly above that I think she fails a basic sniff test when it comes to being relevant (enough for me to follow) in 2010. So, no surprise, I don’t follow her directly. So, when I do see something relating to her, it’s through someone else’s lens. It somewhat intuitively follows that when I do see her mentioned or quoted, it’s all the worst stuff because it’s coming from these worst people. I’ve had that problem with a lot of tech evangelists lately… I see someone quoted through a TechCrunch reblog, and I’ll think they must automatically be a douchebag… and I’m re-acclimating to a saner view of the world. It takes more work than just grazing headlines and news feeds, but it’s been worthwhile!