StockPhotoTalk | Special Interest Blog

QuickLinks For 2010-07-14

• So where does JDK sink his money into these days?
  Squarespace, the popular web publishing platform, has raised $38.5 million in a first round of funding led by Index Ventures and Accel Partners. This is the first outside investment for Squarespace, which was started seven years ago and has been profitable since its first year in business.
  It competes with offerings from both Automattic’s WordPress and Six Apart’s TypePad.
  In addition to Index and Accel, Getty Images CEO Jonathan Klein also participated in the round. Klein [is also] joining Squarespace’s board.
  Joseph Tartakoff/paidContent.org.

Masterfile buys Crestock

The consolidation in the microstock business continues: Canstockphoto - sold. Bigstockphoto - sold. Crestock - sold now to Masterfile, leaving only very few agencies, like e.g. YayMicro, as future potential objects of purchase.

The reasons remain the same ones: "Like many young companies, we had reached the point where we needed additional investment", said Crestock´s Geir Are Jensen. "Crestock went through a rough patch over the past year", said Masterfile´s Steve Pigeon.

iStock unleashes iPhone App, Fotolia rolls out Adobe AIR application

Since I lack the time to publish both in the press release section, here are the latest news:

• +++ iStockphoto delivers iPhone App for browsing and sharing photos +++
  +++ More details +++

• +++ Fotolia launches first AIR application for stock photos +++
  +++ More details +++

 

New Feature on Flickr: Request to License Feature by Getty Images

Finally, after all those years (1; 2; 3; 4), some abbreviated news from Flickr/Getty:

"Since the Flickr Collection’s debut in March 2009, more than 100,000 images have been made available for customers to license. These pictures were taken by 10,000 photogs in more than 100 countries, all of whom are active in the Flickr community. But what if you’ve found the perfect image on Flickr and it’s not part of the collection?"

 

 

QuickLinks For 2010-05-24

• "Hi Bill, this is Rosie":
  AudioMicro acquires Audioo, announced during the TechCrunch Disrupt Conference in NYC => more details about "80 Pounds of Porn?!" + live video from the presentation.
  (The List Of Startups Launching At TechCrunch Disrupt)

• People on the move:
  "Thilo Semmelbauer has joined the executive team at Shutterstock [in April] as President in Shutterstock’s headquarters. Semmelbauer brings a wealth of experience leading subscription-based online businesses", says Shutterstock. Most recently he was EVP, NA Consumer Business for TheLadders.com; more here.
  Adam Riggs, Shutterstock’s President for over four years, remains CFO.

QuickLinks For 2010-05-06

• Cutting out the middleman in microstock:
  Money Business Images and their low priced subscription with roughly 20,000 images.
  Compare the images, see who contributes.
  
  

QuickLinks For 2010-04-15

• Microstock IL, a subsidiary of a|s|a|p Creative:
  A new microstock site, co-founded by Yaniv Hanina, specializing in Christian, Muslim and Jewish content, starting with 100,000 images & 6,500 new images each month.

• These little disrespectful microstockers, you gotta love them:
  "Tony if you want any advice, just drop me a line, haha just kidding!"

• Adam Riggs responding to "How did you arrive at those figures?":
  "Subscriptions are in our DNA, but there are a lot of stock companies that don't like subscriptions because they haven't figured out how to price them in a way that guarantees positive cash flow and is also a value proposition to the customer."

QuickLinks For 2010-04-01

• For Photographers, the Image of a Shrinking Path:
  In 2005, Getty Images licensed 1.4 million preshot commercial photos. Last year, it licensed 22 million — and “all of the growth was through our user-generated business,” Mr. Klein said.
  NYT and discussion over there.

• PhotoXpress: more about this over there.

• The top secrets about Dreamtime´s search engine here.

Jon Oringer on Bigstock

Many will have noted in the past weeks the changes on Bigstock and the rebranding from BigStockPhoto to the simpler, shorter name Bigstock - which was done because many customers already called the site Bigstock and since Bigstock also offers many illustrations. Here´s exclusively more from Jon Oringer about the future of Bigstock:

"I hope by now many of you have taken the time to check out Bigstock’s redesigned website, www.bigstock.com. The site is the culmination of an enormous amount of work by our team – we’ve redone the site’s design, interface and upload tools, rebuilt its search interface and algorithm, and we’ve made important additions to its navigation, branding, help text and SEO capabilities. Every page of the site has been touched with the goal of improving the customer experience, and we’re proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish.

Many people have asked us what the future holds for Bigstock. We plan to make significant investments to expand Bigstock’s presence among image buyers and contributors worldwide. In addition, we’ll be investing heavily to further develop our infrastructure: We just added two blogs, one for customers and one for contributors, and we're also introducing a creative new advertising campaign that will run in major design publications worldwide. We invite Bigstock’s community to tell us what they think about the improvements, and to stay tuned for more exciting news to come."

Related:

• A Short Midsummer Conversation With Shutterstock´s Jon Oringer on Microstock Footage
  (Aug. 05, 2008)
• A Short Conversation With Shutterstock´s Jon Oringer
  (Dec. 30, 2007)

Alamy Quarterly Statement Q4 2009

Detailed numbers here, and James West´s comment over there:

• "Quarter 4 2009 wraps up last year with a 13% drop in revenue from 2008 for the Alamy group, resulting in a better than expected figure from our 15-20% forecast. Our financial position remains strong however, with a 6.5% operating profit last year - just a couple of percentage points below our 'business as usual' number.
  [...]
  We think it is sensible to remain cautious about the near term - there's too much uncertainty to make bold statements about returning to growth anytime soon. [...]

Related:

• £8 Million to contributors in 2009 plus Alamy's top earners
  (Alan Capel)

Fotolia and AudioMicro Team Up on Flixtime; AudioMicro Exclusive Provider of Microstock Music

Flixtime is a great idea, distantly similar (but: "nearly two years in the making") to the cooperation (press release and report) between Animoto (co - financed by Bruce Livingstone: "My mother can use Animoto") and iStockphoto.

Details over here and a jealous comment over there from a competitor: "That’s very neat, however you fail to make it clear that in order to use most of Fotolia’s stock photos and music, you must pay for the content. This is a smart way Fotolia adds a new distribution channel to their stock content".

Related:

• A Short Fall Conversation With AudioMicro´s Ryan Born on Microstock Audio
  (Oct. 22, 2008)

125 Million Image Downloads

Shutterstock announced in September 2008 that 60 million image files had been downloaded since 2005, roughly three months after a high-risk but finally lucky analysis presumed a similar approach then.

In their recent press release with respect to the 10-million-images milestone, Shutterstock mentions that it "has delivered over 125 million image downloads to customers since its founding in 2003", which would result in a very high number of downloaded files in this relatively short period (September 2008 until February 2010) of only 18 months. -One of the last official numbers, iStockphoto achieved 17.55 million downloads in 2007.

Both annoncements from Shutterstock as of 2008 and 2010 exclude footage.

While Shutterstock added "40,000 new images a week" in 2008, it´s now up to "80,000" per week in 2010, with a rejection rate of 60%.

The rest about the "industry of imitators" over there.

Shutterstock: 10,000,001 microstock subscription images and counting

News about yet another newly achieved millions-of-images-count-milestone appeared from most of the well-known microstock agencies in 2009 about every second month. So generally no big thing.

But now for the first time it´s up to numbers with eight figures. Though already an old number a day later, Shutterstock, the inventor of the subscription model and as the first of the Big Four* microstock agencies, completed yesterday shortly before midnight local time NY its next milestone of 10,000,000 microstock subscripton images.

As known all over the place, the absolute number of images can, but must not necessarily be connected to the financial success of a microstock agency: iStockphoto currently shows roughly 6,3 million, Dreamstime 7,7 million and Fotolia 7,4 million - the latter surprising because Fotolia announced 8 million images two month ago in December 2009.

(Screenshot exclusively and courtesy of Shutterstock)

*I have excluded microstock newcomers like PixMac which predominantly distributes external content from Fotolia and Dreamstime and reaches 10,185,000 images this way.

Update Feb. 16, 2010:

• Fotolia´s image-/file count:
  So while on the topic whether or not Fotolia shows 8 million image files, Fotolia´s EVP NA Garth Johnson added: "Our count is over 8 million now. We separate the Photos and Illustrations from both Vectors and Videos."
  "All together, we have well over the 8 million mark."

Google Buzz - "A new way to share photos, videos, and more"

Pure marketing speech (*) or really something new? At least for Gmail users a new way to ease your pain of staying always online and connected... .

   

The Biggest Thing Since the Domestication of Animals

Canadian companies in the photo business have/had some striking people running them ... Bruce Livingstone, Leila Boujnane, Stewart Butterfield, to name a few. The latter was announced last year as a speaker but then could not make it to Hannover, hometown of the CeBIT, the Centre of Office and Information technology and the world's largest computer expo.

Now Stewart is back with a keynote ("Connected Worlds: Surfing the Wave of Change Together") for CEBIT 2010, about "The Biggest Thing Since the Domestication of Animals", and a roundtable opportunity.

PhotoXpress - so far for the Future of Free Images

• "Now with over 600,000 royalty-free, high-resolution images, the next version of PhotoXpress.com will launch soon with new features" and "tools such as Light boxes and Advanced Search."
  (From their recent newsletter; words in bold emphasized by me)

"StockXpert is ceasing regular operations"

From the newsletter:

We are sorry to announce that beginning today, StockXpert will no longer sell new credits or accept new members. On February 11, 2010, searching and downloading at StockXpert will cease. This will be the end of image sales at StockXpert.

All SXP members have the opportunity to transfer their remaining credits to iStockphoto. iStock offers the highest quality affordable microstock imagery in the industry. Come and see for yourself. SXP credits will be honored 1 for 1 at iStockphoto.

Thinkstock, iStockphoto´s second Subscription Service

(Edited 02-05-10) For apparent reasons I can´t hardly comment whether the pricing of Getty Images´ new subscription website Thinkstock/Thinkstockphotos (does anyone remember?) or that 25-images-per-day thing are innovative or not.

The idea for the announced image packs, despite the different number of image downloads (5, 25, 100 and 250), was apparently copied from the mother-of-all-subscription-plans, Shutterstock, and their On Demand subscriptions with 5, 12, 25 and 60 downloads.

Doing some comparing searches on Thinkstock with only one keyword and different sources of images, the pure number of images from iStockphoto on Thinkstock seems to be impressive: from 38% over 44% and 54% up to 58% in various seach results. -You might of course get different results when searching.

More details here and here.

Related:

• Getty Images Begins Rolling Out New Subscription Formats (PaidContent):
  "The company plans to roll out a variety of subscription formats over the next five months that aims to capture customers with small budgets, such as individual bloggers ... Klein said: "This new subscription service brings together 3.5 million images."
  Getty is still wrestling with ways to make money from mobile. Klein sees potential there, but “nothing immediate.” Getty considers gaming to be a particularly lucrative area. “The gaming space continues to grow and developers have an insatiable appetite for images."
• Getty Images launches subscriptions (BJP)
• Did Getty Just Repackage Its RF Dregs? (PDN)

Running a microstock business from Romania can be a tough challenge

... like elsewhere in Europe where many things are not working in one of - if not the - toughest winters since decades.

MIDEM 2010

"How to use social media for marketing your [micro] music business", an impressive presentation during MIDEM 2010 by Gerd Leonhard - whom I once met also in his office in San Francisco when he was running Licensemusic.com - back in the old times of 1998 ("What/WTF, you´re trying to sell and license music through the internet!?").

 

 

(Illustration from his presentation)

QuickLinks For 2010-01-27

• Changes at Veer Marketplace:
  Veer Marketplace content will now be front and center in our search results, along with RF content Veer has from macro photographers and partners. We will streamline our web site so that there is a single search grid (rather than the two separate RM/RF and VMP grids that we currently have). [...]
  We will simplify the customer experience on Veer by only offering easy-to-license RF imagery, including all the imagery from our Veer Marketplace contributors. We will continue to have a wide variety of images from premium-priced images to value-priced images, all offered under the RF licensing model.
  Translated: RM will be removed from Veer.

QuickLinks For 2010-01-20

• After Shutterstock and Dreamstime, also 123RF.com is ready for editorial content:
  Images will be accepted and reviewed now. However, they will not appear immediately on the site. Once we have sufficient content, we will then launch the editorial content on 123RF.com. We anticipate this to happen at the end of February 2010. (How to here)

• A late Happy New Year 2010 with SpiderPic, another nail in the coffin, the modern and more aggressive version of the meanwhile more old-fashioned ImageTrail:
  

• While I missed to mention before Christmas 2009 the new price structure of Fotolia for 2010, Roberto Marinello has a nice overview on this.

QuickLinks For 2009-12-15

• New increased credit prices at Dreamstime. As much as most contributors are understandably delighted, some see things different:
  Any news about an increase in commissions is good news, however I also feel that Dreamstime should put some effort into their marketing of the site to try and get themselves up there along with iS, SS and FT. They need to be seen to be actively promoting the site in order to get the volume of sales to make it worth while staying. If Dreamstime don't market themselves properly a price rise is pointless. (abbreviated)
  Related:
  • Dreamstime adjusts Royalties and Pricing
    (Aug. 14, 2008)

QuickLinks For 2009-12-09

• What´s new at iStockphoto in 2010 here and here?
  Regardless of the new tiered collections, changed prices in some cases ("iStock’s largest files were too expensive") and the ongoing fight with other people in Calgary about exclusive contributors: "We now sell three times as many files as we did back in 2006 ... What´s even more amazing is the average number of downloads per contributor has also risen significantly since 2006".
  Related:
  • iStockphoto: New pricing, a new premiere collection and more changes
    (Dec. 10, 2008)

QuickLinks For 2009-12-08

• New programs need to be disruptive in order to compete with core models:
  It's the first time we had to remove a product since our inception, 5 years ago.
  No matter how difficult is to withdraw features that required a lot of work, I consider such move wiser than supporting a program that proved neither able to compete with our core model nor able to help it grow.
  Dreamstime´s Serban Enache indirectly on the sometimes ambiguous difference between managers and leaders when admitting mistakes: one man, one word, that´s it. Worth reading.
  Background here and here.

BrightQube offline, Pixsy without API

• "Brigh[t]Qube is currently off-line":
  At least since mid-October BrightQube is now offline. Emails to people @brightqube.com don´t get through and no one answers during business hours to calls from within the US.
  BrightQube introduced the Dynamic Mosaic search two years ago, received about $850k in funding and was the first photo portal to combine microstock and high end RF content. Last year Lee Corkran, with his impressive career both as a photojournalist and a manager, sat on my Work-in-progress panel about "New Trends in Microstock, New Technologies for Consumers and New Photo Portals", together with Eyal Gura, Oleg Tscheltzoff and Bruce Livingstone.
  Lee Corkran was looking for another round of financing; in spring he said "BrightQube has been generating strong sales, and the business is now close to generating positive cash flow".
  Apparently that´s not enough today. It´s a shame.
  Related:
  • "So tell me about BrightQube ..." (Nov. 23, 2007)
  • BrightQube Demo Tour (June 02, 2009)

• Anyone Know Where Pixsy Has Gone (and Chase Norlin)?:
  "An e-mail has been sent to partners indicating that the “Pixsy API is down indefinitely”.
  Related:
  • Pixsy: "Next Generation Photo Search Engine" (July 30, 2005)

Alamy Quarterly Statement Q3 2009

"Q3 2009 results will reflect what we hope is the bottom of the downturn. It's too early to predict what Q4 will look like, but I can say that September and October numbers have been very reassuring.

Until we have more data, however, we're sticking with our earlier forecast of a 15%-20% decrease on 2008."

James West here, detailed numbers here.

"Honey, I´m back"

Years later the idea of a microstock photo portal is back ...  these days, you add of course celebrity stuff ... today PixMac announced that - after Fotolia - images from Dreamstime are now available on their site, together with the new Infinite Luxury Collection with around 100,000 images from Image Source.

More details, also here.

QuickLinks For 2009-10-23

• New "Dynamic Search" from Dreamstime:
  Check the new "Dynamic Search" [example] link on our search results page. The feature is just released from beta. The page loads the next set of images automatically as you scroll. We hope this will make content research process much smoother. I believe that each extra click that is saved is a huge leap forward.

• New marketing gig from Fotolia: Operation Level Ground. Related details.

"Yesterday iStockphoto did $850,000 in one day"

• Getty founder knows how to develop ideas:
  “In December 2005, before Getty Images bought the company behind it, iStockphoto did $600,000 of business. Yesterday it did $850,000 in one day.” [which, for the year and minus some variables, will be higher than said here].
  "We are photographer friends, but not photographer cuddly,” says Mr Klein, referring to the fact that profit margins sit at 35 per cent.
  Getty is involved in a joint venture with Time Warner, reviving its defunct pictoral Life magazine as Life.com and sharing advertising revenues. It is the sort of diversification, Mr Klein admits, that public company shareholders would not tolerate.
  Klein says that Getty considered buying Warner/Chappell, the music publishing arm of Warner Music, before Edgar Bronfman bought it.
  When the company was last public - the figures are for 2007 - turnover was $857 million and net profits were $125 million. This year, he says, sales will certainly be down as demand for images from advertising agencies has slumped, although cost-cutting means that “profits will be in line with last year”. However, with $1 billion of debt taken on since the acquisition - only three times” underlying earnings, Klein says - net profits will be down.
  Times Online (compiled/abbreviated).

SS acquires BSP: How to get into single image sales through the backdoor

Acquire another credit-based micro agency which additionally doesn´t offer a subscription plan: more details.

Read Jon´s announcement here on the SS forum: "Though we studied the possibility of building a credit site from scratch, in the end we decided that acquiring and building upon the momentum of a solid brand like BigStockPhoto.

What we did with subscriptions - we plan to do with credits".

Logos appearing on iStockphoto for sale

"Best thing since sliced bread or the death knell to the entire graphic design industry" (TC)?

Here´s the deal:

Pricing - Because each logo will only be sold once, they have a higher price-point, ranging from 100 - 750 credits. When designers upload a file, they will set a recommended price and our inspectors will then make the final pricing decision based on that recommendation.

Royalties - iStock will pay a base royalty rate of 50% per logo design for the first 6 months. We’ll give advanced notice for the rate going forward after that.

Decide yourself:

• Logos come to iStock (iStock forum)
• New Logo Forum (on iStock)
• iStockphoto Will Soon Start Selling Stock Logos, Too (TC)

Shutterstock: Adam Riggs moves to Frankfurt

Here and here (german only). English release may follow later here.

Related:

• A Short Midsummer Conversation With Shutterstock´s Jon Oringer on Microstock Footage
  (Aug. 05, 2008)
• A Short Conversation With Shutterstock´s Jon Oringer
  (Dec. 30, 2007)

QuickLinks For 2009-09-17

• On that cheery note, how is Getty doing?
  Getty’s business is 50 percent “creative stills,” the pictures in Getty’s library that it licenses. That business is shrinking, Klein said. Another 25 percent is sports and entertainment photography as well as footage. That business is up, down or flat, depending on which part you’re dealing with. Finally, Microstock is the company’s fastest-growing business.
  Reuters in Getty Images invests in Daylife, takes snapshot of business.
  Related:
  • Getty Images Announces Partnership with Daylife

QuickLinks For 2009-09-13

• Honey I´m back, with Shutterstock Gets Social - Digital PR Case Study:
  The action they wanted me to take wasn’t compelling for this blog (an interview with the company CEO).  I countered with the suggestion that instead of an interview, they should provide me an account to test-drive Shutterstock.  I told them I’ll browse the images and if I find any I like, I’ll use them in my posts/provide attribution.
  Adam Singer/TheFutureBuzz in a somehow longer blog post on Shutterstock’s blog partner program with David Scott/Web Ink Now, Jason Falls/Social Media Explorer, Dave Fleet/Feeding The Social Media Beast, Brian Solis/PR 2.0 and Eric Friedman/Marketing.fm.

QuickLinks For 2009-08-25

• Stock Firms Profit From Cost Efficiencies:
  In an economic climate of wilting ad revenues and viewer fragmentation, the bill for an original shoot is simply tougher than ever to justify when a cheaper version already exists, according to Mona Kanin, regional director of the NY office for Framepool.
  Not all microstock companies compile lists of broadcasters who use their service, but anecdotal evidence is telling. iStockphoto's footage has appeared on Nightline, The Oprah Winfrey Show, and in ads for the John McCain campaign as well as in music videos and promos.
  Shutterstock's content has been used by A&E, CBS News Marketing, and VH1's Save the Music campaign, among others. As Oringer says: “They've found it to be an affordable library for them, and they've been able to find what they've needed at prices they've never seen before.”
  Broadcasting & Cable.

Dreamstime adjusts Royalties and Pricing

"Similar on getting married, trust someone after the long run not on your first date" (on page five here). In a move long expected and with respect to the highly competitive market long, long overdue, Dreamstime has revamped its royalty and pricing structure with some interesting details.

While some contribitors usually have ambivalent feelings anywhere about these changes ("credit royalties will decrease"), the "repositioning" enables DT "to attract more buyers with the extra budget": "for 5 years we've kept a royalty of 50% for all non exclusives against 20% which was the minimum of the industry. The agency awarding you 20% had bigger prices than us and lower commissions. Which means better budgets to drive traffic."

 

 

Somehow it didn´t work out with Betta than Vetta

More on the “Betta than Vetta cease and desist Letta” from John. -Related details here.

Serban Enache on Dreamstime and Facebook

Following the news about the cooperation between Dreamstime and MySpace from last autumn, the next new cooperation with Facebook was early discussed.

So I asked Serban down-to-earth about the benefits:

"We have always been loyal to the community element that promoted Dreamstime as a leader in stock photography. Ignoring the potential of social networking would be unwise, especially considering our history.

Recent stats conducted by Nielsen show that over 2/3 of the Internet population is using social networking nowadays and that the means of communication have switched here against email. Compete has ranked Facebook as the most popular social network followed by MySpace. The two websites advertise together over half of billion registered users."

Alamy's financial statement for Q2/2009

Full overview here.

 

 

New Web and Mobile images from Getty Images

Full overview here.

Andy Saunders, VP Creative@Getty Images: “Image buyers developing web and mobile content often need hundreds of images at smaller file sizes. With our new Web & Mobile products, we’re able to provide these customers with access to our vast collection of RF and premium RM imagery at the right size and price.” (DA UK)

BJP: All of Getty’s creative imagery house collections and archives will be available in the new sizes. However, it will not be the case with some of Getty’s partners' collections.

The 170 and 280-pixel files will only be available for online usage, says Saunders in a bid to reassure photographers that the lower prices won’t affect traditional sales. ‘It’s a change of approach, but we can’t let the value part of the market be taken on only by microstock companies.’

Saunders adds that the new pricing structure should not affect iStockphoto. ‘This area of the market is large. Customers will now be able to use Getty’s content at a better price. Our range of imagery is different from what iStockphoto offers. People will be able to buy from both sites.’

QuickLinks For 2009-08-04

• Late summer Free Images Madness:

  1. Stock.xchng:
  Breaking News - 400,000 images!
  (July 20, 2009. Related News)

  2. PhotoXpress:
  Offering over 400,000 free professional high-resolution images and illustrations, PhotoXpress.com has officially become the largest online supplier of free stock imagery.
  (August 04, 2009. The website says "443,951 photos")

  3. Free Stock Images:
  Google Trends shows people searching for stock images is declining year on year.
  (Source)

• Late summer Gossip Madness:
  Bruce Livingstone, who founded online stock-photography provider iStockphoto, paid $2.5 million for a landmark midcentury Los Angeles home that was on the market very briefly. The 1966 home, on a slope in the Los Feliz community, has been given landmark status by Los Angeles.
  Mr. Livingstone, 38, bought the house including much of the artwork and furnishings, by designers including Isamu Noguchi, Herman Miller and Arne Jacobsen. “It’s a bit of a time capsule,” said Mr. Livingstone who is relocating with his family from Seattle to Los Angeles for a digital media venture.

QuickLinks For 2009-07-09

• GumGum Confirms Investment Round on Socaltech.com:
  Santa Monica-based GumGum, the online startup headed by Ophir Tanz which licenses photos on a CPM basis to online publishers, confirmed it had raised $2.6M in a venture round Wednesday. Tanz said that the firm is now reaching over 50 million unique visitors a month.
  Related:
  GumGum has been seeing fast growth since its launch last year. Measured as an advertising network (but for images), GumGum became a Quantcast Top 100 site, reaching 13.7 million people in the U.S. and 23.5 million worldwide in February. Currently, GumGum reaches 29.8 million people in the U.S. and 50 million people worldwide, according to Quantcast’s lastest stats. More than 2,000 Web publishers license images through GumGum, which allows them to pay based on how many people see the image or use them for free with embedded advertising.
  Syber News, Image Licensing Network GumGum Grabs $2.6 Million.
  Congrats, Ophir!

• Sell photos, buy photos, a pretty long story on ClusterShot by Ken Ilio/Examiner:
  I’m always left wishing for a site out there where I can upload pictures without the difficult vetting process of stock agencies and where people can have a look and buy my pictures to their satisfaction.
  Guess what? Wishes do come true.
  IPTC keywording is supported. Uploading single photos seem to be the best way to post to the site although uploading a several photos in a zip file is also supported. If your photos are already online, you can upload these photos to ClusterShot easily through RSS/Atom Feeds or if your photos are on Flickr, you can link your Flickr account and choose the photos or sets you want to sell in ClusterShot. I managed to display several of my photos on Flickr on ClusterShot without any hitch.

Fotoglif launches, short interview with Mike Betts

Before Mike Betts and his team launched Fotoglif today, I asked him: can you explain the main differences to PicApp and GumGum, and the possible personal and commercial use of Fotoglif?

Mike responded:

We are all targeting a similar market issue, but with different approaches from both a technical and revenue generation perspective. With Fotoglif we have decided that creating a fully functional advertising network around the content available on Fotoglif, is the best win/win approach. To that end, both the publisher and the photographer get a share of the revenue when using Fotoglif, something quite different than what is offered by either of our competitors.

We maintain a different portfolio of content. While both of our competitors have focused on heavily celebrity based collections we have made every effort to try and maintain a very diversified collection of partners covering all major news and editorial topics. Including partners like Thomson Reuters and The European Press Photo Association has helped to give the collection that added depth.

Fotolia launches Premium Subscription

Just in, and apparently aimed at Shutterstock, Fotolia launched today the full resolution Premium Subscription with some similiarites to the previous Corporate Account.

Prices start higher at Fotolia with €249/month for 25 images/day (Shutterstock: €199), but align with a 12-months subscription (FT with €2.061 vs. SS with €2049). This comparison is not valid for the US where SS starts at $249/month, like Fotolia, and 12-months subscription are $2.061 (FT) vs. $2.559 (SS). Dreamstime in comparison: $239 and $2.399.

Fotolia vector and video files now count as 3 respectively 10 downloads. -More here.