StockPhotoTalk | Special Interest Blog

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. [...]

QuickLinks For 2009-05-07

• iStockphoto Subscription Update by Kelly Thompson:
  We hear you and understand you aren't happy with the royalty percentage. We'll see what we can do, but don't expect miracles. [...]
  Subscription on iStock is not good enough. Photos.com is our best opportunity at creating a competitive subscription site, and you should want to be involved. [...]
  All that being said, it's probably going to be next week before we get back to you. Given the reception, the most likely outcome will be for us to look for alternative sources of images for Photos.com/JIU.
  Over 400 replies currently on over 20 pages.
  A comment* by RapidEye:

Patrick Lor, Co-founder of iStockphoto, joins Fotolia

Patrick Lor, co-founder of iStockphoto, a Getty owned-online marketplace for microstock photography and video, has joined rival Fotolia as the President of Fotolia North America.
According to Lor, his non-compete contract expired with Getty recently, which left him available to get back into the stock photography business.
iStockphoto was initially launched to democratize photography and let all people use images, Lor says. He was disappointed to hear of iStockphoto’s aggressive price increases following the Getty acquisition and maintains that Fotolia’s prices are much more fair for consumers.
Lor hopes to launch some new services in the future but won’t reveal what those are just yet.

Sources: Leena Rao/TechCrunch (compiled/accentuation in bold above by me) and Fotolia.

Regardless of the small mistake in the TC post - iStock (since 2000) is way longer in business than Fotolia (since 2005) - it´s a strange time for iStockphoto:

QuickLinks For 2009-05-06

• Results of the Subscription Shuffle Survey:
  If you´re less interested in the emotional aspect (see this pix & the picture below)
  
  Byline: "Do you feel lucky, punk?" [The image was removed lately]
  
  ... of the discussions (1; 2) over at the iStock forum mentioned here earlier (1; 2), check the preliminary results of the unofficial Subscription Shuffle Survey.
  
  To be fair, please note that in threads like the two mentioned above the negative comments of some members might prevail which might not reflect the opinion of the majority of contributors.
  Also, and again to be fair, the results of the quoted and ongoing survey above might not be representative for the majority of contributors.
  Again, you need to read both threads mentioned above yourself for a complete and balanced overview.
  
  Either way, Shutterstock reacted quickly with a New Marketing Program to the news that "iStock contributors will have the opportunity to sell their images through Photos.com and Jupiter Unlimited subscriptions".

QuickLinks For 2009-05-05

• New Subscriptions Q & A on the iStockphoto forum:
  Quite a journey. The initial thread Subscription Shuffle (see last posting) regarding the integration into Photos.com and Jupiter Unlimited was closed after 1315 answers.
  Now this new thread New Subscriptions Q & A ("We want to see iStock and Getty Images take a bigger chunk of the Subscription market") was started by rogermexico and has already gathered over 400 replies.
  To the question "Won't that weaken our sales here at iStock?" he responds: "No. All of our research shows that the audience for these sites is different enough from our existing customer base that there won't be any kind of cannibalization. We are breaking into a new market, not re-selling to the same one."
  And later: "We've still got a lot to discuss internally about all of this. Obviously a reaction this strong from the community must be taken into account".
  Again, you need to read all the replies yourself for a complete & balanced overview.
  
  [Update May 6th: the above mentioned thread was closed after over 1,100 replies]

Stock Photos and Vectors from iStockphoto soon available on Photos.com and JupiterUnlimited

Following the announcement from iStockphoto´s Kelly Thompson (Subscription Shuffle) this Friday at 2:07 PM MST that "iStock contributors will have the opportunity to sell their images through Photos.com and Jupiter Unlimited subscriptions", and his calculation:

The royalty paid will be 20% or 22.5% of the value of each download, which in turn is calculated by dividing the monthly value of the subscription by the number of downloads in that subscription that month (much like is currently done on iStock subscriptions, but monthly instead of daily). We’re projecting the average royalty payout to be 30¢ – 55¢—a significant upside to similar competitive subscriptions. At the high end, you could see earnings as high as $17.99 per image.

... a pretty vibrant discussion with pros (e.g. "exclusives now have a much bigger market to sell in") and - very unusual for the iStock forum - some cons (e.g. 1, 2 and 3) with currently over 600 responses on over 30+ pages appeared, also driven by questions of iStockphoto´s exclusive photographers about the remaining exclusivity of their iStock content*.