MicrostockGroup

Ooooh, Ed has a load of Ele photos popped in and featuring highly in the best match.
Oddly, 'editorial only'. Weird.

Well, there are no single plans now to .... 

But you can see how they operate. Don't be surprised when this happens again with something else. I can see why sites would want to push wholly owned content though. If Getty can sell all of the Getty files on IS and all the IS files on Getty and PP sites, what % royalties do you think they will be paying out?

39261 files as of ten minutes ago.
And like I said over on the iStock forum, try a Best Match search on 'African Elephant'. (Unless I've got a weird geographic bias, there are 7 EdStock pics in the top 20. (Actually, that best match has changed a lot since last night, when 'ED' had even more).

Is there a big market for 'red carpet' images after the event? Usually if I see pics of celebs they are much more 'generic', unless the article is actually about the red carpet event. (But that's in general publications, I don't read celeb mags).

I see there are now about a couple of hundred 'editorial only' images of 'safari animals'. I'm not sure what part of 'celebs' or 'iconic places that are being shown on iStock for the first time ever' they fulfil. Must be celebrity animals we plebs would need special permission to photograph.
I'm not overawed by these photos, but what other pics are they going to be sneaking in contrary to Joyze's original statement?

See SM 
No, the promised E+ boost never materialised.
The best match has changed quite noticeably since last night on my two 'test checks'.

I think the answer's pretty simple. Getty wants to use iStock's traffic to flog wholly owned items and doesn't want to invest any money in meeting iStock contributor standards to do so. Getty doesn't care about the double standard, and I'm not even sure they mind if a buyer or two is confused or driven away as long as they can get more revenue coming in.

In an ideal world, I'm sure the iStock standards for captions are what Getty'd like, but they're not willing to spend their money to upgrade old tired content to get it. With iStock contributor submissions, we do all the work, so Getty can set the bar as high as they'd like without it costing them much (I think they could save on inspection costs if they streamlined the process of keeping contributors fully and clearly informed about standards, but that's a separate topic).

I think Getty's approach is very short term-ist. I do think they're going to drive buyers away with this "dump and run" strategy with their existing wholly-owned or partner content. Just imagine what the Agency collection would have looked like if contributors hadn't screamed loudly about the awful files that initially got sent to iStock.

JJRD's mantra is to focus on the things we can control - might be necessary for him given he wants to remain employed by Getty, but it's tough doing that if you're convinced that Getty is eroding instead of building up the future of iStock

Plus many celebs are easily available CC on Flickr, for instance, so if the end use is editorial, and your end use doesn't require pixel peeping standards, there's another free source.
(Do we know that EdStock's pics are up to iStock's pixel peeping standards? Their captions weren't inspected, maybe the photos weren't either? Didn't JJ make some rererence to 'evolving' inspection standards?)

Oh, FFS. That's ridiculous.
But also it wasn't there last night, and the best match has shuffled again since my screenshot last night. EdStock's are falling down the page.

So Mr Ed is now over 40K files, and in with the mind numbing pile of red carpet shots are some "gems" that I am 100.0% certain no iStock contributor would ever, ever, have had approved. I know the new ASA has some language about iStock not inspecting everything - I guess these would be the sorts of shots they had in mind:









I's really shameful that Getty's bringing iStock (as a site) down a notch by dumping the old and not so good stuff, plus, preventing iStock contributors from uploading their similar quality shots.

I guess Thinkstock is "downstream" from iStock, but iStock is "downstream" from Getty...

@ JoAnn: absolutely, and great examples. +1

images being buried isn't my main concern...it's the principle of fair business standards that we're all strictly held to but to which TPTB do not adhere. it's watching Getty move images over when we're not allowed to either upload the same type of editorial content, nor may we sell it elsewhere as RF. it's these moves that are in bold contrast to what we're being told that make me realize that although on one level of management the efforts to advocate for us are sincere, that middle level of iStock content managers is becoming more and more impotent against the machine pushing the bottom line mandates.

The bottom one I can kinda understand cause its in the middle of a massive dust storm, you can just make out the Sydney operahouse. But the others are just rubbish, maybe edstock could go to feast school.