March 2, 2010 by pmelcher.

You know there is a problem when a company selling you a service treats you with superiority and disdain. Somewhere in the sale cycle, someone hates the fact that they should be at the client service and not the opposite.

Take software solution companies, for example. They usually work in a vacuum creating  some software solution that they decide is very cool and once finished, look around to see if there is a market for it. There’s usually a market for everything. Once they find the market, they approach the “non software” people in a attempt to sell it. Because they usually fall on non technical people who have no clue on how difficult it has been to design and implement what they are trying to sell, they are quickly branded as “idiots”, “retards”, or “useless”. Nevertheless, the software company still needs to make money to cover the costs of creating and maintaining there operation. So they reluctantly continue  selling their product/services to the “incompetent idiots” that are not understanding the genius behind the applications they are buying.

The software companies stay very very close to their software peers in order to compensate and gather as much praises from them. After all, a praises from a peer is so much better than one from your clients. They couldn’t care less what their customers say about their products and what improvement they would like to see, as they see them as inferior that are only there to pay their bills. Like monkeys trying to explain to you how to operate your car. They come to really disdain this relationship whereby they have to take money from “idiots”. All they want is to be recognized as the new Google, get millions in funding and be admired by other programmers.

There is no love in a application creator/client relationship. We have seen it and we still see it in the photo industry. Since going digital, and especially after the billions spend by Yahoo for Flickr, a little flock of software companies, mostly start ups, have knocked on the doors of this market. And reluctantly did so. From database management to image recognition, they have found and develop some interesting tools for this market. However, they disdain the fact that they have to rely on poorly technology educated photo people to make a living.

What are the signs of such companies ? Well, first and foremost, very poor communications skills. Do not return emails or phone calls or take a very, very long time doing so. Would you answer quickly to someone you despise ? They certainly don’t.

Poor or in existent sales team. Usually handled by an entry level person that has absolutely no power. He/she is obviously at the bottom of the pole at this company, and while usually very nice and understanding, a complete waste of time to communicate with.

No training or well thought out documentation. You either get it, like they do, or you are a complete moron that wouldn’t even understand a step by step instruction, so why bother ?

They want you to come to them. Since their creation is so genius, you should be begging to use it, not the opposite.

Finally, and probably the most important, they turn their creation into a “Solution”. Although they have develop an application that they thought was challenging enough to do, they will come to you as if they have found a cure to your problems. They will take the high road and declare: “we are here to save photography”. They take a superior stand to any seasoned professional and explain with a condescending air of ultimate superiority that they know what is wrong with the Photography business and that their software/app/service is THE solution. All like little messiah, they have a greater purpose than selling their companies services. They are here to save you from yourselves.

Let’s be realist. They are all in it to make money. Lots and lots of money. Nothing more and nothing less. They hide there real intention behind a mask of fake benevolence. Most have this annoying unsaid little scheme that if they can corner the market, they can turn around, raise prices, and get a choking stronghold on this universe. In the mean time they rack millions in investors money with this promise.

While technology is certainly a tool for growth, it is also full of the worst snake oil sellers one can ever meet. Their efforts are not as pure as they say. All of them are trying to make a profit , and as large as possible. So next time they ring at your door, think about their business model. How do they intend to get rich on your back. Sure, everyone deserves to be paid. But, is it worth it for your business ?.How tied up will you find yourself if they succeed in cornering the market ? Who will benefit the most ? You, or them ?

Most importantly, if they then do not respond promptly to your emails ( remember, these guys are on their computers/ smartphones 24/7 ), then you know that they could care less about you. And it’s time to move on.

Posted in technology, idee, picturemaxx, gumgum, commercial stock, copyright, license, finance, photoshop, flickr, web 2.0, transaction | Print | No Comments »

January 5, 2008 by pmelcher.

The next big thing will be a photo agency that distributes all other photo agencies. And independent photographers. Think about it. When Getty Images entered this market, it was with the simple idea to aggregate the content of multiple photo agencies that they viewed as too disperse. To regroup into one location the content of many small agencies. To consolidate. At the time, the technology would not allow for any other model than to place this content into one giant server and index it. So Getty went about to acquire and combine.

With the advent of Google, we now know that this is no longer necessary. One can do a search over millions of websites from one location without hosting any of the content. Google Images shows us a glimpse of what could be done with photography. Instead of spending millions of dollars into content creation and hosting, a carefully crafted company would index the millions of licensable images worldwide and make them available for purchase from one location.

No need for hosting, acquisition, database management and everything else that is very costly. No editors, indexers, no imaging, none of all these costly human beings that complain a lot. Already Getty and Corbis have taken baby steps into this formidable market. Using the old model of a central server, they license material from agencies they have no control over. Mostly in Royalty free, but also in niche sectors. Science Faction or Minden Pictures are good examples. Corbis does same with EPA and others.

But on the horizon are coming very strong alternatives. Spffy from stockphotfinder.com creator Randy Taylor is one candidate while in Europe, Picturemaxx has already cornered the German market. Spffy is still very young and incomplete but is on the right track, while PictureMaxx only needs to be internationally adopted to dominate the market. Both have understood that you leave the content where it is but you make it simple and easy to find.

They are consolidating the industry without spending one penny on acquisition. The key, obviously, remains to build the appropriate search engine that will retrieve the right images from millions of potential candidates. Too many irrelevant results and the image buyers will leave. That is a huge challenge when you do not have control over the metadata who, furthermore, is in no way standardize.

There are ways to solve this which I will not discuss here. Acquisition will soon be an event of the past while distribution partnership will become more of the norm. Getty and Corbis will continue to try to position themselves as those unavoidable distributors, cutting as many exclusive deals as they can. Because the only way to beat such a system is to have an exclusive compelling content and refuse to be indexed.

Why is this a good thing? Well for once, smaller agencies ( in size and volume of images) will be able to compete at the same level. No longer will the pricing or heavy marketing be a decisive factor but rather the image quality. Since everyones image will be comparable to every one else’s, the competition will be more on image relevancy. If that is the exact image needed, then it will sell, regardless of its price or source.

It should makes the price war less relevant. It might destroy branding, which would become quite obsolete after a while, thus easing on the cost of marketing.

Finally, and depending on the politics and ethics of the winning company, create a mega photo agency that could reign as a despot over the industry or a  coop that would share sales data and keyword entries in order to increase the content relevancy.

At the end, as always, the customer, the image buyers will decide.

Posted in Search, IPTC, license, technology, picturemaxx, google, web 2.0, getty, corbis, filter, flickr, Royalty free | Print | No Comments »