Flickr Co-Founder, Canadian Entrepreneur Stewart Butterfield Puts 'Tiny Speck' On The Radar

tiny speck Stewart Butterfield loves the internet. Dating back to his days as a student at the University of Victoria in 1992, Stewart has been immersed in all things web for the better part of two decades. Stewart's web journey has taken him from opining about his favourite bands Phish and the Grateful Dead in BBS and usenet groups in the early days, to creating the world's most popular photo-sharing website called Flickr which was born in Vancouver in 2004 and sold to Yahoo in 2005. Flickr now hosts over 4 billion images and has well in excess of 60 million users.

Now Stewart Butterfield is back with a new web venture, and for those who know the Flickr story well, it may seem like deja vu. Before Flickr looked anything like a photo-sharing service, it was an online game called Game Neverending. While the original incarnation of Game Neverending stoked the creative fire that ultimately led to the launch of Flickr, the game itself had to be shelved in favour of the more commercially-viable photo-sharing concept. While details of Butterfield's new venture called 'Tiny Speck' are still few and far between at this point, it sure seems like Game Neverending is getting dusted off the shelf and making a comeback.

“There hasn't been, yet, a great realization of play online that we have in the real world, the kind of social interaction people have playing poker or bridge or a board game or a round of golf,” Mr. Butterfield said.

Inspired in part by the artistry and sensibilities of writers Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss) and Jorge Luis Borges, Mr. Butterfield says Tiny Speck's goal is to create a “fun and really interesting world with its own rules, absurdist and strange but fully realized, if imaginary.”

Very few entrepreneurs get the opportunity, or would even have the desire, to re-visit a concept left behind years ago. But that's exactly what Stewart Butterfield is doing with Tiny Speck.

While we don't know much about Tiny Speck right now, we do know one thing. With Stewart's passion for gaming and social interactivity leading him back to his roots, the future world of Tiny Speck will be anything but tiny. Stay tuned.

Here's a video keynote that Stewart Butterfield gave earlier this year where he talks candidly about his 'love affair' with the internet.

Stewart Butterfield Keynote - Northern Voice 2009 on Video.ca

TAGS: Canadian, Entrepreneur, Gaming, Online, Startup, Technology, Vancouver, Video

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