My only exposure to Ffffound was when I met someone at a party in Silicon Valley about ten years ago who was working on a clone of Ffffound ("but different"). I'd never heard of Ffffound, and he kept saying it with all of the "f"s sounded out like he was stuttering. It was hilarious on a couple of counts. For one, he was working on a clone of something that was so small at the time that I'd never heard of it, and I was living in the valley and kinda staying on top of startup news; something with no known business model, no big investment, etc. no evidence that it would go anywhere. And, for the other, it just sounded silly to sound out the name every time he said it.
I looked up the site, probably the next day, and couldn't really figure out what it was for, so never visited again. I'm obviously not the target market, but that's one of the funnier memories I have of Silicon Valley and its culture.
Also, I'm a little surprised it's lasted this long. I didn't expect it to, given my impression of it at the time. Good for them.
The "better" version is (and has been for quite a while) Designspiration[0]. A ffffound account, for a while, was just a dick-measuring unit for designers around 2010 +/- a few years. I found through some Google-fu type means a prolific inviter via Reddit and got an account for like $35, but it turned out hardly be worth it.
Weird, this was a site that I used to hit pretty regularly, and then it seems that one day I just forgot it existed? And so now linking to it I remember having gone to it, but I don't remember what it is.
Hah, after skimming a page or two (love the vim-inspired navigation keys, btw) I remembered why I stopped going: tons of random nudity. Nothing like browsing design inspiration at work and having NSFW content show up.
I do, it turned from being a niche for creatives into a porn site. I was following some people in an attempt to curate the content but knew I was only a click away from some NSFW imagery from whatever recommendation algo was implemented, so it stopped being a destination. Then Tumblr came along where there was more control and a better quality community so I made that my inspiration feed instead.
Right? I had the same feeling when I saw this post. It's been almost ten years since I frequented FFFFOUND, but it's still weird to see it go. This site seriously opened me up to some genius art when I was in the most "creative" phase of my life; so much respect and thanks to the operators. RIP.
Simliar, used to be part of my daily browsing habits but at some point it suddenly stopped and I haven't really thought about it in at least 4-5 years until today.
Was a good source of inspiration, sad to see it go nonetheless.
I was a user of the service since 2007, and it is really a shame, although since some years ago the site looked abandoned.
I really liked it for several reasons
- it was one of the few web 2.0 services wave still alive (around 10 years)
- during this time it's been always useful, without any redesign nor relaunch (10 years with the same product!!)
- super simple design
- organic growth, it didn't have any pretension to grow. In fact it was very limited
- it was created by the japanese studio Tha.jp, you could feel japanese design in every detail
- although it's true that there was a lot of NSFW content (specially lately) it was a really serendipitous experience for design inspiration. It was so random that it had nothing to do with trends, that for example you can easily spot in other design inspiration sites such as Pinterest or dribbble
- there were no comments, just likes (much before Fb or IG)
- the recommendation algorithm it was very weird, no actual visual similarity, no the typical more liked pictures or anything easy to find pattern in it(my guess is that it was not very well coded ;) but at the same time it was perfect in terms of discovering new stuff, so it worked in that sense.
Well,as I said, it will be missed. Long live ffffound!
BTW: some years ago, predicting the service was about to close (because of inactivity and server issues) I wrote a small script to backup the account. I leave it here just in case is helpful for anyone.
Mentioned this as a reply, but perhaps worth posting again: check out https://are.na if you are one of the folks yearning for a similar thing (that isn't pinterest). Arena is certainly a tool for a certain niche, but it has a great API (some people have used it as a CMS using the API) and you can create "channels" of content (images, text, URLs) that can be nested/associated within other "channels".
Man, talk about the ephemeral internet: One of my first projects[1] in Haskell was a small tool to go through my Google Reader favorites and download posts I tagged on ffffound.
I also set up a tool to export your Ffffound account to http://www.wookmark.com . Note that a paid account ($20/year) is required, so I can keep the lights on. If you want to do this, create a Wookmark account and message me the usernames from both sites. While I'm writing this, my import scripts are working through a Ffffound account with 6000 images. It's a fairly straightforward process. Happy Thursday.
Well that was vague. I can't help but wonder why. Is it because they have exclusively worked with The Deck for advertising, or did they just get bored? Surely they could find some similarly minimal way to advertise in place of The Deck.
This was a giant mood board for designers, with built-in exclusivity. You could see what others had liked and posted, but invitations were mysterious and scarce – they were seen as a badge of honor among top designers of the mid-2000s.
Funny how memory can be so unreliable – wikipedia says the site was started in 2007, yet in my mind it's been around a lot longer than that. That places it only one year before Obama ran for president – which feels like yesterday, but is also nearly a decade ago.
If they are shutting down, why not make (and share) an archive of the whole site, to preserve the works that's been done? Sharing through bittorrent is free and decentralized. They already host the images, and I get the feeling that sites in this niche are already in some gray-copyright area..
Sad. I remember, at least initially, Google Gears having a tough time trying to parse blog content linked from Ffffound. I'd download all my Reader content for plane rides only to have missing images. Brings back memories of a better time; before Yahoo killed Delicious and Flickr.
FFFFOUND really is one of the last true "brutalist websites"[0]. Today's "minimalistic" websites have lots of whitespace and probably good typography, but also hundreds of KB of JavaScript and fucking progress bars. They are incredibly slow. FFFFOUND is incredibly fast with a design which they didn't need to change in 10 years. Because it works.
[+] [-] SwellJoe|8 years ago|reply
I looked up the site, probably the next day, and couldn't really figure out what it was for, so never visited again. I'm obviously not the target market, but that's one of the funnier memories I have of Silicon Valley and its culture.
Also, I'm a little surprised it's lasted this long. I didn't expect it to, given my impression of it at the time. Good for them.
[+] [-] hbosch|8 years ago|reply
0. http://designspiration.net/
[+] [-] logicallee|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcphage|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] endemic|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] feralmoan|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alexisnorman|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] edvinbesic|8 years ago|reply
Was a good source of inspiration, sad to see it go nonetheless.
[+] [-] nothis|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fgblanch|8 years ago|reply
I really liked it for several reasons
- it was one of the few web 2.0 services wave still alive (around 10 years)
- during this time it's been always useful, without any redesign nor relaunch (10 years with the same product!!)
- super simple design
- organic growth, it didn't have any pretension to grow. In fact it was very limited
- it was created by the japanese studio Tha.jp, you could feel japanese design in every detail
- although it's true that there was a lot of NSFW content (specially lately) it was a really serendipitous experience for design inspiration. It was so random that it had nothing to do with trends, that for example you can easily spot in other design inspiration sites such as Pinterest or dribbble
- there were no comments, just likes (much before Fb or IG)
- the recommendation algorithm it was very weird, no actual visual similarity, no the typical more liked pictures or anything easy to find pattern in it(my guess is that it was not very well coded ;) but at the same time it was perfect in terms of discovering new stuff, so it worked in that sense.
Well,as I said, it will be missed. Long live ffffound!
BTW: some years ago, predicting the service was about to close (because of inactivity and server issues) I wrote a small script to backup the account. I leave it here just in case is helpful for anyone.
https://github.com/fgblanch/ssssave
[+] [-] jack_jennings|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alexandersingh|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yan|8 years ago|reply
[1] https://github.com/yan/hhhhoard
[+] [-] simcop2387|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] btym|8 years ago|reply
[1]: http://ffffound.com/robots.txt
[+] [-] Eric_WVGG|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jszymborski|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GBKS|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] luch|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vermooten|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] huac|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] franze|8 years ago|reply
the decline in 2015 might be the push by google for mobile friendly sites.
[+] [-] exogen|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] icc97|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nobodynoes|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _eht|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] voidz|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gdubs|8 years ago|reply
Funny how memory can be so unreliable – wikipedia says the site was started in 2007, yet in my mind it's been around a lot longer than that. That places it only one year before Obama ran for president – which feels like yesterday, but is also nearly a decade ago.
[+] [-] alkoumpa|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] upbeatlinux|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zichy|8 years ago|reply
--
[0]: http://brutalistwebsites.com/
[+] [-] AdrianRossouw|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sogen|8 years ago|reply
Text heavy.
http://www.thisiscolossal.com/
[+] [-] vermooten|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kveykva|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joemi|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ic4l|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ktRolster|8 years ago|reply
"FFFFOUND gets LLLLOST"
[+] [-] stevefeinstein|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maerF0x0|8 years ago|reply