Must be something in the air… First, there is the mighty Getty, the company  that has [1] invented photography according to it’s CEO, who launched a new interface. Users can now select what country they are from so they can get a more customized offering.  Here is how it looks:

[2]

That looks great, right? Except, they forgot the USA. Which is their biggest market . Man, those meetings must be fun.

Than, there is the always funny Corbis. In an [3] interview for the BJP, a highly place executive try to explain the recent Veer  realignment from high end RM to microstock. Never mind this fits perfectly in Corbis’ history of destroying the brands they acquire, he says : ” To make that happen, he explains, Veer will ‘remove rights-managed images from the site when we launch the new offering.’ However, Nerland tells BJP that the images will continue to be sold on the Corbis website, which is targeted at ‘more traditional and sophisticated customers.”

“sophisticated customers” ? Does that mean Microstock customers are trash ? a bunch of trailer park hoodlums with greasy fingers ? Do they smell bad too ?

The same person proceeds to intelligently explain: “Nerland assures BJP that overall prices for royalty-free images will not go down as a result. However, he adds, ‘some images might migrate down in terms of price point, especially for content that we own.’”

Aaah, that makes sense: price images according to who owns it instead of their quality. Sure. So if they acquire Cartier-Bresson collection tomorrow, that would be cheaper than images of that schmuck over there who loves to shoot businessmen shaking hands. Brilliant !

Told you. Must be something in the air. The Corpocrates are loosing it.