[Update] My Prediction Was Right: Getty Images Acquires iStockphoto

Three weeks earlier, on January 20, 2006, I wrote that

Rumours have it that a company based in Seattle, WA, is talking to a company based in Calgary, Alberta, about acquiring all of the assets of that company.

I received a lot of heat for these lines. People thought I must be mad. The CEO of a well-known company in the stock photo industry wrote that "it’s going to take me the remainder of 2006 to recover from the shock!", if this would be true. Even analysts told me, "Are you out of your mind?"

But it was not too difficult to imagine that I´m talking about Getty Images and iStockphoto, regardless if the headquarters of iStockphoto are in Calgary or anywhere else... .

This issue was discussed in the forums of iStockphoto as well, with the underlying tenor: "No, no, no, Getty will never buy iStockPhoto".

Jonathan Klein didn´t even mention the possibility of acquiring a micropayment site during the Q4/2005 and Full Year 2005 Conference Call on January 26, 2006.

But none of these "Wall Street Analysts" did take the chance to ask Liz and Jonathan about the possibility of an investment in a micropayment site. I think these analysts have no clue what is going on in the so called picture business. Although they are responsible for other people´s money. And now they will start to announce, just like other websites reporting about the stock photo industry, "I saw this all was coming, of course" and other stuff.

$50 million for a micropayment site, compare this to all of the other acquisitions of classical stock photo agencies in the stock photo industry in the last two years. Zefa, the third largest photo agency in the world at that time, was sold to Corbis for around €56 million 14 months ago.

And thus, Alan Meckler was wrong ("Jupiterimages And The Stock Photo Micropayment Business", January 24, 2006), as he wrotes "many just do not get it": they (Getty) just do get it.

And to no surprise the next targets for a take-over might be Shutterstock and Fotolia, both excellent companies.

By the way, where is Corbis?

And afterwards Yahoo might consider how to filter out all the professional images at Flickr and how to market and sell them. And then, one day, they´ll notice: they should have hired Thomas Hawk earlier.

More details of the deal here at The Stock Photo Industry Press Release Cemetery.

Related:

• istockphoto.com: "Bringing the price down to a level where everybody can afford to buy a stock photo" (April 28, 2004)
• All entries regarding iStockPhoto
• “If you want things to stay as they are, things will have to change”; official iStockphoto declaration
• Getty Images Buys iStockPhoto.com For $50 Million; Daryl Lang/PDN
• Getty Images buys iStockphoto for $50M; Seattle Post
• Interview With Fotolia´s CEO Thibaud Elziere: "Microstock Sites Can Capture Up To 30% Of The Existing Market"

Technorati Tags: Getty Images; iStockphoto

[Update Feb. 11, 2006]

Alan Meckler responded yesterday to this blog post in "Who Gets What?".

Well, in the context of the other sentences in your earlier post "Jupiterimages And The Stock Photo Micropayment Business", to my understanding and interpretation the phrase many "just do not get it"  in the paragraph

Community has always been part of the Jupiterimages growth strategy. There is no ecommerce business in the world that would not gain sales by having a significant community position -- many "just do not get it."

referred also to the fact that the other two big players Getty Images and Corbis so far had not been able to build a comparable kind of community like JupiterImages did in the past with some of its special services. Not only to my understanding this was a very obvious interpretation, a lot of other people I talked to shared this interpretation at that time. It might have been an overinterpretation. On the  other hand, time will tell if and how Getty Images and iStockphoto might work together more closely. I think this is only the beginning.

I used the same interpretation of these words in "Definitely A Turning Point In The Stock Photo Industry: JupiterImages Invests In Stock.xchng And Stockxpert.com" (Jan. 24, 2006) in a more positive meaning for JupiterImages, and there had been no complaints that I possibly might misinterpret or overinterpret the words.

But for sure the art of interpretation is sometimes a difficult and tricky one and leaves often clearly room for additional overintepretation that might conflict with the originally intended sense of the words.

 

Comments

[Jeff Greenberg]

1 for 1. More predictions?

[Gary Crabbe]

I posted this on my own site after musing over this sale:

Does Getty Images + iStockphoto = iRobot?

Did the big Getty turn against us working photographers by gobbling up iStockphotos? Now even the "low-balling" RF shooters who ripped the value rug out from under the traditional RM market have been "low-balled". This could only happen by the largest microsite being gobbled up by the largest supplier of visual content, and brought into the fold, or should we say chewed up and swallowed whole. Won't it be a case of grand cosmic irony if the "traditional RF" suppliers start crying about the threat to the value of their work?

[Jeff Greenberg]

Getty brand:
We are Industry Leader?

Jupiter brand:
We are Community?

Corbis strategy:
We are ?

[Goodstockimages]

To me, Getty overpaid, istockphoto does not own any photo, all rights belong to photographers. Getty is buying a good site with a bunch of contact infos... For 1 million you can build a site like istockphoto in 6 months that basically proved they wanted to get in touch with those people that are making real money on istockphoto - those will most likely be "transported" to Getty...

It's funny how peebert (which I think is istockphoto's CEO) ends that thread you're mentioning here.

It's so tipical for them to censorship their forums or to stop all unwanted content (if you read any thread in istockphoto you'd think there are only joy and blooming flowers in this world...)

Will Getty maintain this status quo or will they change it ?

peebert says on Sun Jan 22 7:08AM
"Hahaha... You ladies in your sewing circle, you do go on.... If that blind item even had anything to do with us, whoever "leaked" it was peddling stale goods indeed. The truth of the matter is that we've been approached at one time or another by pretty much everybody in the stock photo industry. It goes on all the time and, if we ARE the company in Calgary that item is referring to (which we're most likely not), it barely even qualifies as news. We're the pretty girl on the dancefloor, and someone's always looking for a whirl. Sorry to disappoint, kids, but there's nothing to see here. If it were anything that was in any way significant, it'd be something nobody could talk about anyway, so it's useless to try and call anyone out for more info. Blah.

Move along folks, show's over..."

[Mike Panic]

peebert is not the CEO, bitter, aka Bruce Livingston