StockPhotoTalk | Special Interest Blog

Merry Christmas with Alan Meckler

   

A Holiday Message From mediabistro.com: "Anti-Santa Laurel Touby visits the mediabistro.com office and provides helpful alternatives to gifts before the tables get turned on her". Original video here or here. (Thx, LO)

27 Letters: Talking in Pictures

Tired of/exhausted from playing around with Moodstream?

Here´s another new serious toy - 27 Letters: Talking in Pictures - from Getty Images.

Apart from that: A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, in micro-/mid-/macro-/whatever stock.

QuickLinks For 2008-12-12

• iStockphoto Premiere Collection: a step closer to including Getty content on iStock?
  Good thinking. This makes a lot of sense. Hopefully if they put Getty content in the Premier Collection it will be content worthy of the designation and not just a dumping ground for old stock.
  A funny bon mot from a recent MP Yahoo posting.

• A light shines brightly for Kerry entrepreneur:
  Jerry Kennelly, who sold Stockbyte to Getty Images 2 years ago for $135m, is preparing to launch a major new online venture backed by a multimillion euro investment.
  Kennelly has hired 15 staff, about half of whom are former Stockbyte employees, currently conducting market research and expecting to unveil the venture in the second half of 2009. He declined to unveil details yesterday.
  UKpreneur.co.uk.

New Alamy Q3/2008 financial statement

Simultaneously with the first decline of quarterly revenues from Q2/2008 ($8.52 million) to Q3/2008 ($8.166 million), Alamy´s present Q3/2008 financial statement misses to show important information which appeared in the statement in previous quarters, like:

• new RF/RM images from photographers/agencies
• photographers/agencies submitting RF/RM images

Alamy explains: "Please note that we have had to withdraw some parts of this statement that refer to contributor image submission volumes. This is due to a technical problem which has affected the way those figures have been reported, resulting in a misrepresentation of numbers in some instances."

iStockphoto: New pricing, a new premiere collection of "best exclusive content" and more changes

In a nutshell the changes at iStockphoto with a new three-tier offering:

• "Low end": new Dollar Bin (around 200,000 images at start, priced by size at much lower rates, starting in spring 2009):
  
• "High end": a new Premiere Collection "of our best, exclusive content" called The Finite Collection:
  • Starting in May 2009 with a higher pricing:
    
  • "We'll be looking to put about 200,000 images in collection by the end of the second quarter [2009]".

"On September 24, 2008, Meckler and Klein exchanged several emails and text messages"

This super long SEC filing (Dec. 4th) from Jupitermedia describes the long process between Jupitermedia and parties potentially interested in acquiring Jupiterimages or parts of it.

Bottom line: due to the current economical crisis the acquisition price fell from initially $145 million to $120 million over $75million to finally $96 million.

a21 files for bankruptcy

Gardner Davis, the attorney representing a21 in its Chapter 11 case, said it was the nation’s credit crunch that forced a21 into bankruptcy. A21 has been looking for a buyer, but potential purchasers had difficulty getting financing. “In a less chilling economic environment, this company would have never filed for bankruptcy.”

A21 has lost money every year since acquiring SuperStock, with a net loss of $2.6 million in the first nine months of the year. The company´s stock has been below $1 a share since 2004 and has been listed at less than a penny per share recently. SuperStock operated at a net loss of about $16,000 on revenue of $5.9 million in the first nine months of the year, and ArtSelect had a loss of $324,000 on revenue of $7 million. But corporate expenses made a21´s overall net loss higher.

(Florida Times-Union, compiled. More details here)

Corbis Video: Leadership in a Changing Market

Time for a little unpaid advertisement for Corbis (original video) with Gary Shenk, Don Wieshlow, Edie Tobias and Jens de Gruyter: