MicrostockGroup

You're right.  On a related note, I've stopped buying merchandise on Amazon because I realized they have too much stuff.  You can buy anything you could possibly want on Amazon!  Why would anyone shop there? 

Oh wait, I take that back, I actually buy just about everything on Amazon, BECAUSE they have so much stuff (and the prices can't be beat, but that's another topic.) 

The key here isn't how much stuff a site offers, it's "can the buyer find it."  So far, I'd say the proof is that Shutterstock buyers CAN easily find what they are looking for?  All you doomsayers who think that every additional image accepted by Shutterstock is another nail in its coffin, do you have proof that suggests their business is suffering because of it?  Are you a buyer?  Just because you do a search hoping to see your own images and they don't come up, it doesn't mean that the buyer is having a bad experience.  I DO buy images for my day job and I can tell you that I enjoy Shutterstock's search much more than iStock's, so from my perspective, the site offers a good experience and I have never thought "There's simply too much here, I won't come back!"  As long as SS continues to provide an Amazon-like experience, offering a wealth of options for every conceivable need but delivering what the buyer wants most near the top of the search results, it will continue to prosper.  And if you're uploading marketable images that buyers actually want, you will prosper along with SS.

I've heard from more than one stockbuyer in person (one of them working on the publicity department of a pretty big company here that easily spends over $1000/month on stock) that they ditched SS because they didnt have the time to wade through all the junk out there (so yes, im convinced it hurts their business). Their database is just totally clogged...
I agree they're in dire need of a big spring cleaning, as someone said on the SS forums: its not about deleting niche-pics that dont sell so often but have their value, its about the gazillion staplers, strawberries, etc. isolated on gray(ish).

Of course they have many thousands and thousands of happy customers, (its always a miracle to me how buyers can find my pics in the millions of others, there really must be sh*tloads of customers); never claimed they dont have, i also agree all in all they seem to run their business pretty darn well. Still, there's always room for improvement and for SS the database would be a good start.

getting rid of content isn't that critical - but making search work is.  The problem with SS is that the keywords are a mess and since they split multi-word keywords a lot of what appears to be spam really isn't. (and there is an immense amount of spam too). Also the way search works on SS is roughly sales over time - so say a good selling business image will show up high in niche search if it has those keywords. (as opposed to some of the keyword relevance search engines). I think they tried to address some of this by using the description in the search too.

I'm guessing that any automatic weeding program would have to be very cleverly written to not cause more trouble than it was worth, and it probably would not be cost effective to actually pay people to choose which images to delete.

maybe more rejections but sure some have given up

I wish I had started saving these a few years ago:

SHUTTERSTOCK STATS:
   16,333,183 royalty-free stock photos / 73,424 new stock photos added this week / 320,570 photographers

Somewhere years ago I remember one person would do a weekly update. Anyway, 73,000 this week.

Good accurate keywords make sales. Incorrect or irrelevant words, just detract. But smart buyers know how to use the search, it's to their benefit and saves them time.

Don't forget that SS have two aces aces up his sleeve that are kept there for ''bad times''...

1. some sort of exclusivity program.
2. implementation of a credit based system.

those measures will enhance their popularity significantly if their are somehow threatened.

SS is the top agency, probably they are not so greedy like other agencies...... they must have an ''insurance policy'' for the future in case one of the top 4 threaten their 1st place.