After walking gingerly down a street peppered with litter and small pools of putrid puddles, you climb up old, steel steps and are transported into a vast (yet cozy feeling) old-styled book store. It's a book store like they used to be, where there are dark wood banisters leading up to second floor balconies and the walls are lined with mahogany-colored shelves, and those are lined with the colored spines of gloriously unique book titles. Such was the setting, at the Housing Works Used Bookstore for the Fotolog book launch party on Wednesday, May 10th.
Fotolog, yet another photo-sharing website, has crossed into old-school photo sharing with its very own book made up of photos from the website. Fotolog was founded in 2002 for New Yorkers to share photos, and like most things on the 'net, grew to global proportions. Chatting with CEO Michael Crotty I learned that they get 400,000 hits a day from 3.2 million users (of course, that number's probably different today...). Among one of the main contributors to the book, and guests at the party, was Meetup.com's Scott Heiferman who was there with his girlfriend and her UN-coworker. Andrew Weinrich (who's up to some new projects), Major League Baseball Advanced Media's director of operations (that's Director of Special Ops to you!) Ryan Nelson and I caught up on about six years worth of news. Meanwhile, Fotolog CEO Michael Crotty, Bzzbe's Jack Welde and Monitor110's Jeff Stewart (who started Mimeo) were talking bidnez as two other fellows hovered in the corner, peering at books of all things!
It was like the old days, cocktails were flowing, sponsors banners were flying and the spirits were high. And yet, so many new people. Do I sound old?! Yikes!
A chronicle of the people and events in technology, internet and media since 1997, mixed in with snapshots of musings and observations.
