Fred Wilson suggests Flickr is the seminal web 2.0 company and lists 10 reasons why they are.
- 1) Making online content default to public instead of private creates community
- 2) Every web service needs to have a profile for every user
- 3) Users should be encouraged to comment on other user's posts
- 4) Tagging content is better than foldering content and the tags should be public
- 5) Users should be encouraged to tag their content when it is posted to the service
- 6) Widgets should be used to make content available off of the service
- 7) Content on the service should be "bloggable" with one click
- 8) Engagement metrics like comments, favorites, views, can and should be used to drive discovery (the most interesting algorithm)
- 9) Geotagging is great but we've yet to see a great interface for geotagging
- 10) Machine tagging (autotagging) is the next big thing in web 2.0
Coincidentally I recevied an e-mail from them to ugrade my old skool Flickr reg to Yahoo reg. would add to this list their tone and ways of dealing with their users. Inclusiveness, humility, and seeming joy at the way people are innovating with their APIs.