Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Stewart Butterfield http://pulse2.com Sun, 27 May 2012 19:13:16 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 Tiny Speck Raises $10.7 Million http://pulse2.com/2011/04/12/tiny-speck-raises-10-7-million/ http://pulse2.com/2011/04/12/tiny-speck-raises-10-7-million/#comments Tue, 12 Apr 2011 22:06:34 +0000 Amit Chowdhry http://pulse2.com/?p=45780 Continue reading →]]>
Tiny Speck has raised $10.7 million in a second round of funding from Andreessen Horowitz and Accel Partners. Next week Tiny Speck will be launching a beta test of their online social game Glitch. Tiny Speck was founded by Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield. Yahoo! acquired Flickr in 2005 and since then several employees left to join Butterfield on this venture. Glitch has several APIs for building game add-ons. Alpha testing of Glitch started about a year ago. This investment will be used for speeding up the game development and the infrastructure behind it. [VentureBeat]

]]> http://pulse2.com/2011/04/12/tiny-speck-raises-10-7-million/feed/ 0 Flickr Co-Founder Stewart Butterfield Working On Online Video Game Company Called Tiny Speck http://pulse2.com/2010/11/22/flickr-co-founder-stewart-butterfield-working-on-online-video-game-company-called-tiny-speck/ http://pulse2.com/2010/11/22/flickr-co-founder-stewart-butterfield-working-on-online-video-game-company-called-tiny-speck/#comments Mon, 22 Nov 2010 22:24:31 +0000 Amit Chowdhry http://pulse2.com/?p=38207 Continue reading →]]>
Stewart Butterfield, the co-founder of Flickr is now working on an online video game company Tiny Speck. Before building and selling Flickr to Yahoo!, Butterfield originally wanted to create an online video gaming company.

He failed to attract investors back then so he backed out of the idea. Tiny Speck’s first game Glitch is currently being tested with 5,000 users. Glitch is a massively multiplayer game that lets a lot of people play at once. Glitch is a fantasy world with avatars and characters that is inspired by wood block illustrations according to the NYT. The illustrations include giants, chickens, and underground mines.

Stewart lives in Vancouver and founded Flickr in 2004 with his former wife Caterina Fake. They had the photo sharing idea after they couldn’t finance their online game. Butterfield started Tiny Speck with 3 other Flickr employees.

Andreessen Horowitz, Accel Partners, and other angel investors invested $6.5 million in Tiny Speck. Glitch is going to be a free game and they plan to make money by selling virtual goods.

[New York Times]

]]> http://pulse2.com/2010/11/22/flickr-co-founder-stewart-butterfield-working-on-online-video-game-company-called-tiny-speck/feed/ 0 How Flickr Dealt With Shepherd Johnson http://pulse2.com/2009/06/16/how-flickr-dealt-with-shepherd-johnson/ http://pulse2.com/2009/06/16/how-flickr-dealt-with-shepherd-johnson/#comments Tue, 16 Jun 2009 19:48:37 +0000 Amit Chowdhry http://pulse2.com/?p=16615 Continue reading →]]> stewart-butterfield
Flickr founder Stewart Butterfield

Sheperd Johnson is a Flickr user that 1,200 uploaded graphic images of Guantanamo Bay prisoners as comments on the White House Flickr photo stream.  Yahoo! Flickr quickly removed the images and told Johnson that his images were gone forever.  They offered him $25 as compensation and blocked all of his messages.  Flickr founder Stewart Butterfield even called Johnson “a dick” for doing what he did.

Yahoo! VP of Customer Service Heather Champ told Johnson that his photos were deleted because he was considered a “spammer” for putting all the images as comments.  Johnson’s account was also deleted without a warning.  Champ also told Johnson that his images were way too graphic.

Johnson was doing this as a way to get attention over President Barack Obama’s support for a controversial bill that suppresses government torture pictures.  To compensate for the lost images, Champ offered Johnson a Flickr Pro account and a $25 gift card.

“She tried to shower me with platitudes like ‘Oh I know you are passionate about this issue,’” stated Johnson in an interview with Valleywag.  After dealing with Johnson, Champ uploaded a picture that indicated her day wasn’t going well.  Johnson commented on that picture stating “this is like watching a slow train wreck.”  Champ blocked him.

Johnson then decided to contact Flickr founder Stewart Butterfield, who had left Yahoo! last year.  After the jump is an e-mail conversation between Johnson and Butterfield.  The e-mail from Butterfield calls Johnson “a dick” among other things.

[via ValleyWag]

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]]> http://pulse2.com/2009/06/16/how-flickr-dealt-with-shepherd-johnson/feed/ 0 Flickr Execs Working On New Start-Up http://pulse2.com/2009/04/30/flickr-execs-working-on-new-start-up/ http://pulse2.com/2009/04/30/flickr-execs-working-on-new-start-up/#comments Thu, 30 Apr 2009 19:28:24 +0000 Amit Chowdhry http://pulse2.com/?p=14642 Continue reading →]]> stewart-butterfield cal-henderson
Stewart Butterfield (left), Cal Henderson (right)

Many engineers from Flickr have been laid off as part of a massive lay-off that took place at Yahoo! yesterday.  Flickr Chief Architect Cal Henderson and Co-founder Stewart Butterfield are now rumored to be parterning on a new start-up.

Butterfield resigned from Yahoo! in June 2008 and Henderson left yesterday.  The new start-up is expected to revolve around social gaming according to Kara Swisher.  Yahoo! purchased Flickr for $35 million in March 2005.  Caterina Fake, wife of Butterfield and another co-founder in Flickr joined a start-up called Hunch as the chief product officer.

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