December 8, 2007 by pmelcher.

Micro giant Istockphoto is pulling its prices up, starting January 7th. According to the new rates, already published on the community driven website, all sizes are going up one dollar, except for the X small, which remains at the legendary $1. Microshooters are in a frenzy at the prospect of an additional .20 cents per image sold and are already making plans to increase their holiday shopping budget. Competing sites, like Dreamstime and Fotolia, cannot wait to receive the bountiful mass of angry clients that will trickle down to them as they huff and puff at the incredible cost of imagery these days.

Industry news sites and other part time bloggers/economist/experts have all pulled out their slide rulers to calculate the impact of this decision on the photo industry and the world economy. Others will just sit back in their lounge chair and while puffing on an imaginary pipe ( for health reason), say “I told you so”, while crossing their long legs. Some will scout Youtube in the desperate hope that they can hotlink to a video of a singing Bruce Livingstone in pajamas, while industry veterans will write long, painful letters about the good old days of when microstock was really cheap and affordable.

Corbis will pay thousands of specialized analysts to study Istockphoto’s move and millions of work hours will be spend in crowded meeting room figuring out what should be their next move. Some say they plan to move the whole company into a virtual photo agency and move all operations into Second Life, “a first in the industry”, said Gary Shenk’s avatar, adding, “pricing will soon be a thing of the past” before transforming himself into a butterfly.

Alan Meckler, Jupiter’s CEO, will first argue that it was his idea and that Getty stole his idea. He will then purchase another website which has nothing to do with photography and finish his day buying some of his own stock, grumbling that if no one wants them, he will purchase them all.

A21 ( no longer a group for lack of members) will post yet another loss of a few hundred million of dollars and someone we never heard of will say something that will be ignored by everyone. A month later, a press release will be issued explaining that this person has resigned and the stock will drop another 150% to $0.000000002. Again, no one will pay much attention.

The tech/software/portal companies will plan a special celebration in honor of their members and throw yet another expensive party where everyone will be drunk and celebrate the fact that they have nothing much to celebrate. But at least they have each other. and a free T-shirt. If they are lucky.

Photo organizations that speak on behalf of their members will issue a triumphant press release saying that thanks to their increased effort, Getty was forced to raise the price of their microstock offering and that the battle continues. As usual, everyone will smile politely, not sure what that “battle” might be.

Finally, I will check out the weather forecast for today, read the news and enjoy a relaxing week end.

Posted in No sense, Jupiter, news, corbis, Royalty free, getty, Microstock | Print | No Comments »

December 6, 2007 by pmelcher.

One thing that has always bothered me is why the commercial stock companies always offer discounts on their images and never the editorial photo agencies. Hold it ! I am not saying they should.

If you go on Royalty free websites, there is always, always a promotion going on. Get 2 images for the price of 3, 40 % off, and so on. Makes you think that maybe, just maybe, the official price is a little bumped up to cover all these promotions.

Why not bring the price down once and for all ? Yes, I know, it is called “marketing”. But, if the market is so price sensitive than why not adjust the pricing. That is, for those still asleep, if more people buy your images because of a special promotion price, than why not make this promotion price permanent? And it is not just the Royaltee free distrubutor who play this price game. The big Corps and others do it on rights managed. Take Getty, for example. If you get pass the barage of offers from Istockphoto ($1), Valueline ( $19), Web ready ($49), you still end up getting 25% off any RM images you purchase before the 31 of December. A holiday special : Buy your kids a license from Getty this Christmas season.

But seriously, what makes the same image less expensive than a month ago? because it is cold outside ? ( for those of us in the norther hemisphere and close to the Atlantic Ocean), because Wal Mart is having sales too? Because your photography budget is depleted ? Because its the Holiday Season ?

And in this particular case, it applies to editorial images too.

Photographers must be happy to suddenly see their commissions  reduced to a quarter less.  Happy Holidays guys!!

It used to be that an image had a fixed price based on its value. Now its price changes depending on what time of the year it is. Insane.  Editorial agencies that only license to the editorial market do not have this seasonal promotion because they actually do believe that an image has a certain fixed value. That variable pricing brings too much confusion in an already very confused market. They do not believe that quantity replaces quality and furthermore, they don’t really like to mess around with their photographers revenue.

Although your magazine is going to make more money this month thanks to all these additional ads, you get do it cheaper. Makes no sense. It devalues your collection. It devalues the work of photographers. And finally, it just confirms what image buyers always thought : your pricing is arbitrary.

We all know that others will blindly follow in Getty’s big track believing that everything that the giants does is genius. But this giant is wounded and, like any wounded animal, it can be dangerous, even to himself.

While they are busy with Istockphoto creator web 2.0 buzz boy Bruce Livingstone new toy, the consumer oriented Jamd.com ( sorry, its password protected), and its imminent launch, they are probably not to conscious of the demolition job being done behind them.

So, attention shoppers. Do you research. Some images this month will be at an expectational low for a limited time only. If you are savvy enough, you could pay less than you did last month for the same campaign or article. And if you do like what you see, tell the other agencies that you can get an “equivalent” image ( you have to love that expression) for 25 % cheaper. If all of you do it for enough time, you will bring this industry down to its knees and even further. You will finally get great images for really cheap. Until they become rock bottom cheap. Like microstock.
Until there is no way a photographer can survive. And you start wondering where did all the great content disappeared.

Posted in photojournalism, prosumer, web 2.0, license, finance, transaction, Royalty free, getty, corbis, editorial, Microstock | Print | 2 Comments »

December 4, 2007 by pmelcher.

Social bookmarking website Digg.com has just launched, last night, an addition to their service. From now on, registered users will be able to submit images. For those unfamiliar with Digg, let me explain. You see an article you like, you submitt to Digg. If others like it, they also “Digg” it. The more Diggs, the more the article reaches the top. On the other side, a lot of people will go to Digg.com and read the most popular article.

What is very interesting here, is that it is now possible with images, creating the first social bookmarking of images. Why is this relevant to our industry ? Digg is a highly popular website, at least in the USA. It has a huge amount of traffic. This will allow us to see what images are the most popular. But with a twist.

The images that will appear to the top will be the images that most people find interesting to share, not to be confused with the ones they like the most. It is more likely that we will see more strange, funny, exotic images than groundbreaking photojournalism . But nevertheless, for advertisers looking to find the next viral marketing campaign, or publishers, seeking to populate their pages with eye grabbing content, it will certainly be a source of inspiration. For photographers too, it could become a source of inspiration.

Furthermore, it will be much different than a Flickr or other photo file sharing platform as the majority of voters will be not interested in photography. Finally, it will also be fascinating to see how many photo agencies, including the microstocks, will add the “digg” buttons under every single of their image.

With the crest of the web interaction at its peak, it will be a very compelling destination to monitor regularly for anyone curious about the relationship of photography and its users.

On a parallel note, and the second newsworthy item, is that Digg selected Idee Inc technology to prevent having duplicates. Thanks to Idee, if people vote for the same image but seen on different sites, it will add up instead of duplicating. A confirmation that the company has a real dedication to its core competence and not venturing into doubtful activities.

you can see Digg Images here Be prepare to see a lot of images of Cats and Dogs…

Idee Inc new website can be seen here. Check out their lab. very cool stuff

Posted in digg, idee, Search, flickr, news, photojournalism, Microstock | Print | No Comments »

December 3, 2007 by pmelcher.

Photo agencies ( distributors) :
Getty Images: The already succesful company is under the gun to prove to investors it can continue to deliver on its historical growth. With not much left to acquire that would trigger a 30 % growth, it is left to its own demise to add fuel to its own engine. Already on the path to explore other revenue streams, like music (micromusic anyone ?) and video, it is about to launch itself into the B2C Eldorado and try to reap benefits from this ever promised land. All eyes are watching the giant at its second attempt ( remember the Art.com fiasco?) to cash in on this unknown territory. Also on the near horizon, hopefully, an accelerated effort to be as strong on international market than it is in the USA. The last quarterly report showed that Getty does  not even make 5% of its revenue in Germany which is, after all, one of the biggest market in photography. Does Getty have the right people in place to make this happen ?

Corbis: The overweight rich kid of the industry is trying to shed some fat. With one of the best content in world, will it be capable of showing, finally, a profit? Will it stop playing games with papa Gates’ money and enter adulthood? We heard the promises, now let see it happen.

stockthatdoesntsuck: Will high end stock photography survive? Their content is amazing, their intention pure. Will the market support them? 2008 will certainly let us know.

SplashNews: With one of the smartest management in this industry who has the keen ability to ignore risks, Splashnews goes for the jugular. They just concentrate their fire to those images that sell very well, and that is it. Combine with a true understanding of how to leverage technology, it is one of the most succesful photo agencies around. Let’s not be surprised if Getty or Corbis are knocking at their door.

Zymmetrical: Launched in 2006, this mid stock has everything to please creative professionals. With not only photography, but also fonts, video and graphic, it is the one sop shop for budget conscious creative professional. It also allows pros to compete with amateurs on the same platform without giving up on pricing. At the end, only the best image wins.

Tech Companies:

Idee Inc : Still the one to watch on the image tracking field and beyond. Extremely succesful and innovative, it is the kind of company that will keep on surprising the industry over and over. The Toronto base company has its ears to the ground and its eyes fixed on the horizon. We should see and hear a lot from them in 2008, and even sooner.

Mochilla, Britepic, Picsout and others: This will be the year of the user-generated revenue. Following in the footsteps of Corbis and soon Getty, other photo agencies will offer free ad supported images to 60 million bloggers worldwide. A few unknown remain: What will be the photographers cut ? Will people click on the ads ? Will it be a revenue generator or gobbler ? Will it prevent agencies to continue doing adequate business with professional website ? Finally, will it devaluate images overall by making them so easily available ? Hang on to your seats, photography is going for a wild spin.

Brightqube: Came out of the gate with a huge, and well deserved WOW effect. But, once passed the cool interface, it is just another royalty free platform. What’s next ? Knowing the team behind it, be ready to be wowed some more.

Picturemaxx and others: Portals where everyone dump their images into one central server is so 1990’s. The next generation of agency will be using virtual portals. Image database networked to each other will deliver the ultimate user experience to image buyers. One location to search any or all photo agencies worldwide is the ultimate image buying tool. For agencies, especially the small and medium, being part of a global offering makes more sense. Ultimately, it will change the way this industry works over the web. Sub agents and distributors, beware.

The Outsiders : Like istockphoto, Idee, Mochilla, the photo industry is being re invented by people outside of this industry. A lot of companies are currently in alpha mode and ready to revolutionized the way we do business. The success of Flickr has brought a lot of attention to our industry and brilliant minds are looking to cash in. New ways to license, to search, to retrieve. There is a lot of very interesting projects in the works. Some will stick, some will not. a few areas of development are:

- Image licensing : pay per view

- Search : Semantic search ( French company new phenix are already years ahead)

- Auto keywording : image recognition applied to tagging

- Auto editing : Data mining applied to cognitive results.

- Automated translation: Become local without any additional work. Years of development about to break open.

- Intelligent images : images will tell you where they have been, who has seen them, for how long.

and much,much more..

Media companies:

MediaStorm: The ones to follow. Set extremely high standards to how our images will be seen by our children. Offers a 3D emotional quality to still photography. Brilliantly succeeds in adding video, sound, text and stills into intensely rewarding experiences. Question is, will Mediastorm become a media company by itself or just license its content ?

Msnbc.Com : At the forefront of what can be done with still photography and the web, Msnbc.com keeps on re inventing itself, making it one of the most desirable destination for web surfers. They have never stood still, never took their success for granted. Furthermore, they pay a decent price for photography. We like that.

The New York Times : As respectful to photography on its web pages as they are on the print edition. The quality and placement of photography keeps on rising as they have realized how important it is. With newspaper like this, photojournalism will never die.

Yahoo/Flickr/Google: Will they or will they not? The whole industry is buzzing with the prospect of these mega players entering the photo licensing business and squashing everyone in their path. Flickr had announce earlier this year that 2007 will be the “licensing” year. It did not materialized. Will 2008 be the year where the flood gates open ?

( Partial) Conclusion: by no means exhaustive, this list is a good indication of the companies that will start or continue to amaze us in 2008 . Feel free to add. I know I will…

Posted in Search, google, web 2.0, multimedia, mediastorm, celebrity, Midstock, prosumer, flickr, getty, Royalty free, corbis, france, msnbc.com, editorial, Microstock | Print | No Comments »