StockPhotoTalk | Special Interest Blog

QuickLinks For 2012-01-19

• Just extended:
  The 50 Free Stock Media promotion from Pond5 is now running until Jan. 31th.

• Jobs shed as Getty Images absorbs iStockphoto:
  Getty Images has confirmed to BJP that 30 employees have been made redundant at iStockphoto. "We are completing the process of full functional integration across the two brands," says Getty Images' CEO Jonathan Klein. "Nonetheless, Getty Images remains committed to the vitality of the iStockphoto brand."
  The layoffs comes just a few days after Kelly Thompson announced that he was leaving Getty Images. Getty Images says: "Kelly has now decided that the time is right for him to leave the business to pursue other interests and we wish him the very best in all his future endeavours.
  Kelly's last day with the company will be January 20."
  BJP.
  Related:
  • Kelly Thompson, now SVP, PD@GI
    (Aug. 05, 2011)

• Fotolia’s new art-inspired stock photography collection:
  We’ve teamed up with deviantART to create a collection of amazing images.
  The collection features over 3,000 images, what’s even more unique, these images are exclusive to Fotolia, meaning that they are only available to Fotolia members.
  Images: The deviantART Collection on Fotolia. - More details.

Kelly Thompson, now SVP, PD@GI

"I'm excited to share that starting in September, I'll be taking the next step in my journey--but I'm not going too far. I will be moving to New York to take on a new role as Senior Vice President, Product Development for Getty Images. I will be relocating to Manhattan.

My current duties related to the day-to-day operation of iStock will be performed by Rebecca Rockafellar, who will move into the role of General Manager of iStock as well as retain her current role as Senior Vice President of Ecommerce at Getty Images."

More.

 

 

"Hi Rebecca. So what is your position on ... Ok, you get a few days to get to know us  ."

(Sean Locke)

 

No one left from The Fabulous Four: BL, PL, GJ, KT - all gone.

 

Related:

• iStockphoto: COO Kelly Thompson Projects $200 million in Revenues, Microstock Agency launches Vetta Collection
  (June 24, 2009)

"We've already taken Berlin, let's take Manhattan!"

This Galaxy, Planet Earth, a little to the right, Latitude 40° 42' 51N, Longitude 74° 0' 22W, then a soft turn to the left, Latitude 51° 4' 60N, Longitude 114° 4' 60W .
 

July 6th/7th: Are you iStuck?: "Check out our first ad, now running in some of the best design magazines in the world. We’ll be adding more of these ads" (Bigstock blog).

July 8th: We've already taken Berlin, let's take Manhattan!

(Whatever your particular brand of Vodka is, Joe Cocker supersedes Leonhard Cohen).

(Screenshots below =>)

 

iStockphoto Releases New Price Filter

In a small industry, even quite ordinary news are meanwhile big news.

Details, more here and here.

And by the way, still many, many images in the Agency Collection, given the ratio of quality/price, are just a bad joke.

 

 

EdStock Collection by iStockphoto, with Editorial Content from Getty Images

Another week, another opportunity for iStockphoto to push some news about a new product called EdStock.

Tomorrow iStock is adding to its Editorial Collection more content from:

"a collection of news, location and entertainment images from Getty Images photographers. You´re going to see unreleased images of famous people and iconic locations. By adding this content we hope to draw more attention from traditional consumers of editorial imagery.

At the outset we said we would be leaving politicians and celebrities to our colleagues at Getty. There is still no plan to get into current, timely news – none of the new content we are adding will be more recent than 180 days."

Initially 7,000 images will be displayed. After last week´s news about the new redeemed credit targets, comments from contributors were, how to put it, unsurprisingly not too overwhelming, with one of the very few exceptions being Nicolesy:

"This [looking at this move as a positive one with the hope to have more customers in the future] was my take on it when I first read the email. Photos of celebrities and "difficult to release/get access to" locations won´t compete with my content and is likely to bring in new customers. As long as BM placement is fair/relevant and changes according to how the files sell, then I don´t see the problem."

Prices for the new EdStock Collection have yet to be announced. Tomorrow. 

 

[Update June 09, 2011: Edstock images "will all be priced at Exclusive+" - level.]

[Update June 10, 2011: The link to EdStock and the EdStock Collection]

iStockphoto´s New Redeemed Credit Targets

Facts below, announcement/discussion, open discussion, comparison (also after the jump).

It is just that for people used to partly live and die with large calculations in even larger excel sheets this represents the biggest challenge, the ultimate kick to undertake some further fine-tuning from time to time.

Note the RC-changes for image and audio files Y-o-Y.

QuickLinks For 2011-05-07

• +++ HOLLEREE +++ The next new collection from iStock +++ HOLLEREE +++
  Called Photo+, it´s open to non-exclusive contributors, with "the best files from the Main collection selected by the artists, available at a slightly higher price point" and the pricing for Photo+ being the same as for iStock´s Exclusive collection.
  The usual suspects in the iS forum are yodelling: "I can't understand why you would increase the price on files that are already much cheaper else where" and "exclusive collection prices with non-exclusive royalties".
  Some other opinions, and also more positive ones, over there.

iStockphoto Makes More Than 10 Percent Of Its Revenues with iStockvideo

• "Though stock photos account for the bulk of iStock's business, video is its fastest-growing category, and last year it surpassed 10 percent of revenue, Thompson said.
  In 2010, revenue outside North America surpassed 50 percent, he said.
  The company also expects it eventually will offer high-end "2K" and "4K" video, which has roughly quadruple the resolution of mainstream 1080p video".
  Starting today, iStock is making the shift with [the introduction of] Vetta video.
  Editorial videos will come too, though Thompson wouldn't say when.
  
  Strongly compiled, more over there in a long & smart report from Stephen Shankland.
  As of November 2010, 65% of the video files on iS were exclusive content.
  On the quoted revenue numbers above ... you do your own math.

Kelly Thompson of iStockphoto: "Where we go from here"

• "What we had no idea at the time was how much and how quickly the site would grow."
• "This is the system we need to go forward with, and there isn't any flexibility for now."
• "As I've said, we will re-examine targets once the year-end numbers are in."
• "Like this past year, we’re pushing for significant growth next year."
• "But money isn’t going to be what makes you all happy" - For the annuals of PR.
• "I want you to know that I would tender my resignation at iStock before I had to do something I couldn't stand behind. The same can be said about all Executives here at iStock."
• Just 2 hours old and already 21 pages of responses: full discussion. Go read them to get the bigger picture.

QuickLinks For 2010-09-09

• iStock growing pains show crowdsourcing challenge:
  iStock management ... predicts that licensing will continue to grow overall ... the current seniority-focused system fundamentally corrodes iStock's long-term business health, said Kelly Thompson. [...]
  "Eventually everyone drifts up to higher canister levels, which isn't sustainable in the long run. The more successful iStock is, the less profitable it becomes." [...]
  Cultivating or exploiting the community? Thompson bristles when questioned whether iStock's size and market power might mean it's turning from cultivating its community of contributors to strip-mining it.
  "There's no way we could do that," he said. "We have no motivation to watch our contributors go elsewhere. Unless we provide a fair royalty, that will happen." [...]
  "We tried really hard to reward people who have been active and produce great work." Measuring that by credits rather than downloads "was asked for and asked for and asked for" by community members. "We gave exactly them what they asked for there."
  The sedulous Stephen Shankland asking Kelly Thompson, and Sean Locke: "Now we are in a system where ... it looks like it will require a concentration on constant creation and updating."

[Update] Why ...

(Announced from iStock in "Important!: Royalty Changes and iStock Collections")

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 +++

 

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)

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)

"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).

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)

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.

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.

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.

iStockphoto: COO Kelly Thompson Projects $200 million in Revenues, Microstock Agency launches Vetta Collection

Kelly Thompson became COO of iStockphoto in September 2008, a few months before Founder & CEO Bruce Livingstone left the company.

In his new position Kelly is responsible for the future of the world´s - in absolute numbers - economically most successful microstock agency, which employs a staff of 115 in Calgary (including contractors and the Berlin office) and additionally 110 image inspectors around the globe, in total about 225 people.

Recently I spoke to Kelly and asked him: what is the future focus of iStockphoto under the COO Kelly Thompson?

"I´m a pretty technical guy: I have a computer science degree with a specialty in UI design and worked at a major enterprise search company for a long time, so you´ll see a focus on that for me.

Bruce left the company in brilliant shape with the content we have: I might be biased, but I think we have some of the best content on the planet, micro or not - as Vetta attests to.

QuickLinks For 2009-06-18

• Big man is back in business (well, not really):
  Madrona Venture Group is leading a $4.4 million venture round in Animoto, the fast-growing New York startup that has developed an easy way for people to create interactive slide shows from personal photos. Amazon.com, iStockphoto founder Bruce Livingstone and angel investor Jeff Clavier also participated in the deal, which brings total funding to about $5 million.
  Pudget Sound Business Journal.
  The rest of the story on John Cook's Venture Blog: The company also is pushing deeper into commercial offerings. It already has a service for professional photographers, which allows them to create personalized slideshows of weddings, senior portraits or other special moments.
  The company will use the $4.4 million to add new features, including the incorporation of video and new ways to match images with music.

QuickLinks For 2009-06-14

• Corbis unit cashes in on dead-celebrity images:
  It’s part of a strategy to grow Corbis’ rights representation business, which already is a lucrative one. It was a year ago that Corbis rebranded its rights services division GreenLight. Today, GreenLight does about $50 million in business.
  Puget Sound Business Journal.

• Monetizing Digital Content - Innovative Ideas as Media, Entertainment and Technology Transform the Economy:
  “Google is the culprit, they’re not interested in engagement,” said Jonathan Klein, CEO of Getty Images. “You come in, and then go out.”
  Corante/Rebuilding Media on Digital Hollywood’s Advertising 2.0 conference.
  I´ve asked Getty if they could make the presentation of JK publicly available.
  [Update June 17th: I learned that JK was "a participant on a panel discussion. He did not give any presentations. The sessions at Ad 2.0 were not tapped, sadly".]

• Weird story: "'British pensioners' on BNP election leaflet are actually Italian models"
  Pamphlets being distributed by the far right party to 29 million homes ahead of next month's European and council polls feature testimonies from five "typical Britons", giving their reasons for voting BNP. But far from depicting proud BNP supporters, the images are actually stock photos from online picture libraries that have been used by dozens of websites to promote everything from painkillers to caravans.
  Suspecting that the images on a BNP leaflet he scanned into the site were dubious, a blogger ran them through a "reverse image search engine" called TinEye, which traces previous appearances of pictures anywhere on the web.
  At least three were for sale for a small fee on the iStockphoto website. The Canadian-based firm did not respond to enquiries about whether its customers were allowed to use images for political purposes.
  Telegraph UK (compiled)/Thx, MS.

CEPIC 2009: Free Images and Free Flying Crown Caps

So while Obama Barack stayed in Dresden during the CEPIC congress for nearly a day when we were out in the evening for drinking a beer and wanted to return to the hotel while all roads were blocked, the fun continued with our session on Saturday morning, moderated by John Balean from Topfoto, on Free Images: Friends or Foes, with Patrick Lor of Fotolia, Kelly Thompson from iStockphoto, Charlotte Lippmann of UK-based Picture Research Association and me.

Up to now you never ever had a tiny chance in your lifetime to sit on a panel with two iStockers, one former one and one present one, and the session partly mirrored this dramaturgy of its very own kind with crown caps flying from the right side all over the panel desk to the left side.

Thanks also to Jon from Shutterstock, Serban from Dreamstime and Alex from 123RF for contributing their opinion on the matter. And a special Thank you! to Barack who responded to the question if a professional picture researcher should use more free images with a clear voice by kindly saying: Yes, we can´t. But I don´t go into the details here.

iStockphoto Partner Program

Kelly Thompson has a longer update on the iStock/JIU/Photos.com issue (compiled):

• That's what we're calling it: the Partner Program. This is the program through which we give you, the iStock contributor, opportunities to make your content available through other sites in the larger Getty Images family. The first two such sites are going to be Photos.com and Jupiter Images Unlimited. Will there be others in the future? For sure. [...]
• 3. Photos.com and JIU will pay a flat royalty per download: 25¢ for non-exclusives, and 30¢ – 38¢ for exclusives, according to canister level.
• 4. Photos.com – Powered by iStockphoto. We will become the driving force behind Photos.com, improving the quality of the collection with the strength of the iStock brand. [...]