View: Turning A Photo Sharing Community Into An Editorial And Stock Image Outlet, Comments From Fotolia

As written earlier and quickly adopted a day later by VISUELL, Gruner + Jahr´s magazine STERN is in the process of developing a new way to sell images from the company-owned photo sharing website View Fotocommunity through a new "portal" called augenzeuge.de. Additionally selected images will be sold through the photo agency Picture Press using the APIS Network. Photographers receive 50% of the revenues, and these amateur photos will be sold under the same pricing projections as if a professional photographer would sell his images.

I jumped at the chance and talked with Andreas Trampe, Head of the editorial department of the STERN picturedesk, and the responsible STERN project manager Alireza Jerani about the new venture. Both explained:

• Over a specific period of time, augenzeuge.de and the View Fotocommunity will become different portals with different content.
• Augenzeuge. de will only showcase editorial imagery and cover the most recent news.
• The View Fotocommunity, with currently 19,000 users, 1,000 - 1,200 new images per day and overall about 298,000 images, will later only showcase traditional stock imagery and include ecommerce capabilities, like augenzeuge.de.
• It should be noted that augenzeuge.de is still in Beta modus:
  
  • A model release contract for photographers will be offered later on the website as downloadable pdf-file.
  • IPTC captions will later be transfered automatically from the image file into the image database.
• Images will be double-checked, firstly by picture editors from the STERN and later by those from Picture Press.
• Photographers have to sign an exclusive contract for at least one year.
• Jerani pointed that this new venture is not specifically aimed against micropayment sites.

However, two questions remain:

• Why should a photographer submit any longer images to a traditional micropayment site when he can make much more money with this new model?
• Why should a photo buyer acquire stock imagery from the View Fotocommunity when he can save a lot of money acquiring (probably) similar stock imagery from a micropayment site?
  

I asked two Fotolia executives to comment on augenzeuge.de and View Fotocommunity:

Thibaud Elziere, CEO Fotolia:

"They try to be microstock wihout being microstock orientated. It will be hard for them. Even microstock is hard. Look at the big companies like Jupitermedia (sxc and stockxpert) and Inmagine´s 123rf [a wholly-owned subsidiary of Inmagine]."

Dittmar Frohmann, Fotolia Germany:

"They are not playing on the same pitch. They might attract some photographers and initially the sales potential to Gruner + Jahr publications sounds interesting but in reality it is not big at all in comparison to our huge customer segment. And most important: to the buyers they are just another middle priced source."

Related:

• Picture Press Starts To Convert Images Of Photo Sharing Community Into Cash, Flickr Probably Follows (Aug. 10, 2006)

Comments

[Tim L*illing]

Manual Trackback, (in Kraut, as usual):

http://www.dokufoto.de/nachrichten/augenzeuge-stern-view-fotocommunity-122/

[Tim L*illing]

I don't quite get Dittmar Frohmann- who said that augenzeuge or view are trying to be microstock? MFM, RM, picture press etc. are definetly a sign that they are not microstock, but a "normal" stockagency.

Regarding your two questions: eehm, thats what we call a catch 22, hey?

[John Heymann]

'And most important: to the buyers they (Augenzeuge.de) are just another middle priced source'

Even if one tends to agree that augenzeuge.de will have no significant impact the above statement from the fotolia people seems to be a little insolent.

What is Fotolia if not just another player in an already crowded microstock market with a business model based on exploiting herds of clueless contributors?