The Istockphoto Forum

[Shank_ali]

Sorry for being so blunt but what ** happened...
When i joined Istock in 2007 the forum was a hive of activity.It was bustling with new threads and lots of comments posted by the community of artists and staff.
What's caused its demise?

[gostwyck]

Sorry for being so blunt but what ** happened...
When i joined Istock in 2007 the forum was a hive of activity.It was bustling with new threads and lots of comments posted by the community of artists and staff.
What's caused its demise?

Maybe it is due to people (like you) continually spouting pointless drivel? Looks to me as if you are now having the same effect over here too. It just becomes hard work wading through all the nonsense to read the posts of people who actually have something to say. Sorry for being so blunt ...

[cobalt]

"comments posted by the community of artists and staff."

You already have the answer. Also now that the RC system has made us all competitors the activity is moving behind closed doors on facebook or other forums. Educating the competition isn´t a good idea.

[Lagereek]

Hey Shanks!  why dont you put a sock in it and take a days break, will ya. This forum is not a substitute for the IS forum. Funny in the beginning but now the novelty is wearing thin and its becoming boring.

[Shank_ali]

"comments posted by the community of artists and staff."

You already have the answer. Also now that the RC system has made us all competitors the activity is moving behind closed doors on facebook or other forums. Educating the competition isn´t a good idea.

You just might of uncovered some of the truth Jasmin.The explosion of the social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter,to a lesser extent,has had an adverse effect on internet forums like Istockphoto.It's not the whole reason but it has definately had an impact.
The other good thing that Istockphoto had and still maintains to this day is discipline.It make contributors responsable for what they post and will never tolerate abuse of any form against a fellow poster on the forum.

[RapidEye]

It's an interesting question, and Cobalt seems to have the answer.

[cobalt]

Forum traffic is strongly dependent on what you make of it.

If they wanted more traffic on site, they would create it. istock is a pioneer of building a web 2.0 community, so they know exactly what they are doing. If they allow the traffic to move elsewhere, it is because they feel comfortable with it.

The facebook istock community is alive and well, but it is more like a walled garden, not many new people get in there. And there are other networks/circles/twitter that people use.  

I miss the old istock forum community, but I am also having a lot of fun on facebook.

And there is always the microstockgroup :-)

[RapidEye]

istock is a pioneer of building a web 2.0 community, so they know exactly what they are doing.

Perhaps that should be "knew".

[jsnover]

There are also disaffected people like me - I'm not banned, but have chosen to stop any sort of community involvement in response to Getty's choices about how they treat contributors.

When you treat people like dirt, it's not surprising when they stop hanging out

[cclapper]

istock is a pioneer of building a web 2.0 community, so they know exactly what they are doing.

Perhaps that should be "knew".

My thoughts exactly.

[sjlocke]

"Maybe it is due to people (like you) continually spouting pointless drivel? Looks to me as if you are now having the same effect over here too."

Heh heh.  Seriously.

[lisafx]

There are also disaffected people like me - I'm not banned, but have chosen to stop any sort of community involvement in response to Getty's choices about how they treat contributors.

When you treat people like dirt, it's not surprising when they stop hanging out

And me.  

I have never been banned (knock on wood), nor am I avoiding community involvement at Istock.  The fact is, there really isn't much of a community there anymore.  The IS forums are practically deserted, so nothing much to post about.  

[Shank_ali]

There are also disaffected people like me - I'm not banned, but have chosen to stop any sort of community involvement in response to Getty's choices about how they treat contributors.

When you treat people like dirt, it's not surprising when they stop hanging out

Your not alone Jo Anne and it's good people like yourself 'not hanging out' that has made the forum a little stale this last year.IMO

[cobalt]

The forums are a great place for artistic talent from all walks of life to meet up. Having fun together, leads to meeting up together, shooting together etc...it also makes all shootings cost efficient, because we teach each other, model for each other, share any other costs...etc.. so the community has a strong financial effect IMO. If you always had to hire assistants, pay for workshops and tuition, pay more for the models, had to research all locations yourself and pay for using them...had to pay a specialist for "medical shootings", "sports shootings" instead of getting all the detailed subject related info for free from a fellow istocker...we would have to sell at Macrostock prices to make it work.

So apart from the fun, the forums serve a very important business function, especially when it comes to image production and social media marketing.

From there communication and reputation spreads into the wider visual community.

I am now spending more time here than on istock and I have rediscovered other forums, not just stock related. Will this affect my work? I don´t know.

The forum community was an important part of the decision to be exclusive to istock. If I signed up today, I don´t know what I´d do.

[Shank_ali]

.

I am now spending more time here than on istock ..

Me too 

[caspixel]

Before Getty bought iStock, the forums were so fun - a rebellious, almost-anything-goes kind of place. I feel lucky to have met some great people (who I have also met in real life as well). Once Getty bought it, the fun was totally sucked out of it. First by banning topics, then the shenanigans with the business, the frequent thread locks, and then finally their quick on the draw, somewhat personal, banning policy. As one of my favorite iStock people once said, "It is now one of the most boring corners of the internet".

[pancaketom]

...

The other good thing that Istockphoto had and still maintains to this day is discipline.It make contributors responsable for what they post and will never tolerate abuse of any form against a fellow poster on the forum.

admins on the other hand...

[RT]

Maybe it is due to people (like you) continually spouting pointless drivel? Looks to me as if you are now having the same effect over here too. It just becomes hard work wading through all the nonsense to read the posts of people who actually have something to say. Sorry for being so blunt ...

Hey Shanks!  why dont you put a sock in it and take a days break, will ya. This forum is not a substitute for the IS forum. Funny in the beginning but now the novelty is wearing thin and its becoming boring.

I agree with both of these replies, this use to be a place where we could have (sometimes heated) discussions about real issues related to the industry, it's an open forum so I suppose you're free to spend hours upon hours here writing your daily rants but for everyone else I've made this request:

http://www.microstockgroup.com/site-related/thread-ignore-button/msg210255/?topicseen#new

[Shank_ali]

RT this thread is about the Istock forum.The basic idea is to read the title and if you have a comment about,you guessed it,the Istock forum in this instance you post a comment.Is it so hard to follow that  principle of an  on line forum?

[cobalt]

RT

I find your comments and those of the other posters above very offensive. This subject is of interest for many people, especially the istock exclusives.

If you personally dislike Shank than please take your sandbox fight elsewhere. Or just ignore him, problem solved.

I really don't need you to police a thread I am interested in.

Please stay out of threads if the subject doesn' interest you.

[ShadySue]

Double post - sorry.

[Microbius]

There are also disaffected people like me - I'm not banned, but have chosen to stop any sort of community involvement in response to Getty's choices about how they treat contributors.

When you treat people like dirt, it's not surprising when they stop hanging out

And me.  

I have never been banned (knock on wood), nor am I avoiding community involvement at Istock.  The fact is, there really isn't much of a community there anymore.  The IS forums are practically deserted, so nothing much to post about.  

+1, why would I hang out somewhere being run by people I now despise? It's just another consequence of the animosity they have been causing over the last few months. I can't imagine Getty are losing any sleep over it either.

[rubyroo]

I pretty much stopped looking at that forum once Rob Sylvan dropped out.

[Mantis]

I stopped participating the morning I woke up to a site mail from Lobo warning me about a forum post.  It was an honest question about where IS was going and it got locked pretty fast. Just not worth the time and treatment.

[Shank_ali]

I stopped participating the morning I woke up to a site mail from Lobo warning me about a forum post.  It was an honest question about where IS was going and it got locked pretty fast. Just not worth the time and treatment.

Yep you dont want a site mail from Lobo on istock.Had a few weekend passes OFF the forum as a result....

MicrostockGroup Email Updates

[Site]

Site	Earnings Rating
Top Tier - Big 4
Shutterstock	100
iStock	66.7
Fotolia	34.9
Dreamstime	26.7
Middle Tier
DepositPhotos	21.6
123RF	16.3
Canstockphoto	11.2
Bigstockphoto	9.5
Veer	8.7
Low Earners
PantherMedia	6.7
PhotoDune	5.8
isignstock	4.1
Zoonar	3.5
GLStockImages	2.7
Stockfresh	2.2
YayMicro	1.8
FeaturePics	1.4
MostPhotos	1.3
ScanStockPhoto	1.1
Crestock	0.8
Cutcaster	0.6
AllYouCanStock	0.1
ClipartOf
Pond5
RevoStock
Clipcanvas
DrawShop
ClipDealer
PhotoSpin
VectorStock
GraphicRiver
Pixmac
PhotoCase
The3dStudio
photaki
SuperHug
PhotoKore
StockPhotoMedia
Regimages
ImageVortex
Imagegate
ViscoImages
iRockStock
Vivozoom
More Poll Results Updated: 2012-05-26