One of my new favorite sites, Lifehacker, links today to an Adaptive Path interview with Eric Costello. (Adaptive Path is a user experience firm in San Francisco; Eric Costello is one of the creators of Flickr.)

The entire interview was interesting, but two parts were particularly so. First of all, that the community aspect of Flickr

"... was definitely a surprise to us. Flickr was really envisioned initially as an organizational tool for an individual who has this huge collection of photos. The social network was built in just so that you could restrict access to your photos. But what has really taken off with Flickr is that it's turned out to be a great platform for sharing with the masses, and not just with your small collection of friends."

Not long ago I wrote about how the key characteristic of Flickr, that which distinguishes it from all other websites where you can upload photos, is the community (comments, favorites, forums, etc.). I was deep into it for a while -- I have been busy with other things lately and spending less time on it. It's interesting -- actually, it's almost hard to believe -- that this aspect of Flickr was unexpected.

I always knew that Flickr was a product of Ludicorp, the same group that once made a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG for you real geeks) that you've probably never heard of. It was called the Game Neverending. I read the blog of one of Ludicorp's founders and so heard about the GNE as soon as it came out in 2002. I would have become a glassy-eyed, drooling hostage of the game, if I had DSL or a cable modem. Unfortunately (or fortunately, perhaps) all the Flash functionality just took too damn long on a dial-up Internet connection, the sparkle wore off, and I stopped playing.

What I didn't realize is how much the GNE had to do with Flickr. In the interview, Eric remembers somebody describing Flickr as "massively multiplayer online photo sharing." Which kind of belies the first point (that the community was a surprise) ...