Snap, crackle and shot

October 10, 2007 by pmelcher.

What do you do when your business is not doing so well ? you do a deal with Corbis, of course. Webshots, owned by suffering web giant CNET, who has seen its membership decline in the last year and is an embarrassment to CNET for lacking revenue, has, according to Microstock news website Stockphototalk.com, made a desperate attempt to genrate revenue by supllying content to Snapvillage.

Let’s quickly review. Webshots offers the possibility to license ones images, thanks to its’ pro (meaning you have to pay $2.95 a month) version. Thus, people who badly need a wallpaper for their desktop and are willing to pay for it, or would like to purchase a print of a sunset in Maine can do so. Stock companies like Indextock,  LonelyPlanet and many others have their images on webshots pro, probably lured by the forever fledging hope to reach the mythical consumer market. Certainly, they will NOT provide their images to Snapvillage. Now, Webshots offers the possibility to Webshots paying members to have their images on Snapvillage. Yes, unlike other microstock companies, Snapvillage offers to license your images if you pay them. Mmm? Why not submit your images directly to Snapvillage for free ?

Has anyone paid attention to the rest of the images ? Its 400 million images of girlfriends posing together. It’s a 400 million images of pet dogs and cats in crowed backyard. it’s 400 million portraits of overflashed, red eyed, gitzy myspace queens wannabees. It is, in other words, the creme de la creme of user generated content. It is the depositary of those, like the Flickr crowd, who do not want to sell their images but share them.

One cannot imagine how much work the Corbis editors will have to do to extract any interesting images while Webshots will have to explain to their “pros” why their images are being rejected by cart loads.

Genius idea , indeed !

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