Photo: Stewart Butterfield
One little-known quirk about Vancouver is that it’s home to a small but thriving tech scene. In fact, I was surprised to discover that the guy who invented Flickr, Stewart Butterfield, lives right across the street from me. Unlike Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg, Stewart sold out years ago, netting a measly $35 million for Flickr. But he’s hard at work on his latest project, an Internet-based game called Glitch. I interviewed him for Vancouver’s leading business magazine, BC Business.
Stewart Butterfield, Philosopher Game King
By Remy Scalza
Stewart Butterfield takes play very seriously. Born in tiny Lund, B.C., and currently a resident of Yaletown, the former Cambridge philosophy student is best known for co-founding the photo-sharing website Flickr, which sold to Yahoo Inc. for an estimated $35 million in 2005. Now, pursuing a calling closer to his philosophical roots, the 37-year-old Butterfield is preparing to launch an Internet-based game called Glitch, which he believes will shake up online gaming much as Flickr did photo sharing.
“There aren’t any other big-budget, high-production-value, massively multiplayer games out there that aren’t about killing other people,” Butterfield says of Glitch, due to be released early this year. “Hopefully, people will just come and play.”
Click here to read the full article on the BC Business website.
