flickr (beta)

One of the stars of ETCON so far has been Flickr, social software by Ludicorp, who created Game Never Ending.
Sitting in London yesterday morning I read plasticbag.org, where Tom cites Cory Doctorow.
It seems like the usual friend making website like Friendster etc, but there is a lot of depth to it and the focus is photography. I've spent less than an hour playing about with it so far, but it seems quite addictive. The basic concept of joining and inviting your friends is there, but people added to your people list start as acquaintances, then you can promote them to friends, which is a much better match to how we operate in real life.
There are other nice touches in the user interface, which is a work in progress, but it feels right in many ways. A lot of it is written in quite informal spoken English, so there is a rapport or a personality to the system.
There is a group system for running message boards around and these are used in the communal image sharing and IM application. I think that it is going to be fascinating to see how it gets used, it might become a focal point for photographic collaboration and lots of other things besides
Paul describes how it might evolve based on the APIs available, but maybe Ben sums it up best.
Come and say hello, I'm GavinBell