In the wake of the visual success of Flickr, a new, french based website was launched today : [1] EYEKA. Funded by the same company that led the series B financing of DigitalRailroad, EYEKA has for mission to “bring together creators, viewers and media partners to promote and monetize quality photos and videos… We believe that each pair of eyes provides a unique and refreshing way of looking at the world, and we want to provide a new way for creators and their audiences to interact”.

Its founder and CEO, Franck Perrier is a survivor of Corbis France and a  ex-CEO of uber-archive [2] Roger Viollet. It is set to work on the same premises of  “community”, “sharing”, and other love and be loved principle of all other Ajax filled Web 2.0. The revenue sharing is unclear  yet however, as  they mention that “Payment will be based on fees proportional to royalties received by Eyeka. Lump-sum compensation may be established if and when needed”. They want you to sign their contract first.

I played a little bit with it and while it clearly says it is in Beta, another very 2.0 attribute, it is very slow, unstable, crashes and freezes a lot, and does not seem to be Firefox friendly ( That is so not web 2.0).  Hopefully they will use the $4 million of initial funding to create something simpler and more efficient.

On a last note, they seem particularly focused on mobile media (images and video taken with a cell phone), in an attempt to mash up ( very web 2.0) Flickr, Scoopt, Istockphoto and Youtube in one platform.

We wish them luck .