Author Topic: Are an external search engines future of microstock? (Read 5969 times)

melastmohican · « **on:** May 20, 2008, 16:32 »

So far I found two of them and they do mostly the same, do a search on few microstock sites at the same time. So if your a buyer you just go to one place and search. This is common then approach is different for these two sites:
1. http://www.imagetrail.net/ would redirect you to original website and let you buy picture from that site.
2. http://www.brightqube.com/ got it's own shopping cart and handle all buying process so you would never see where is image coming from.

lisafx · « **Reply #1 on:** May 20, 2008, 17:42 »

You are probably on to something here. Istock added the prefix "stock photo:" to all images recently so images would show up in search engines.

louoates · « **Reply #2 on:** May 20, 2008, 18:22 »

This may be a growing trend but I didn't much like these two. The first didn't have any of my best images show up using my best keyword. The second's interface really sucked -- never did figure out how to scroll the screen. But it did show a bunch of my work (in Everyday mode, not Professional mode) but without attribution or where it was coming from. They could all be pirated for all I know.

lee · « **Reply #3 on:** May 20, 2008, 20:21 »

Hi Lou,

Thanks for your feedback on BrightQube. Understandably, our UI is different. We were frustrated at the state of paginated search results in common existence today, so that if your picture is not on page 1 or 2, your images will likely never get seen. On BrightQube there is no scrolling, rather it is more like Google Maps, where you zoom in, out or click and drag to pan the visual landscape of image results. Much like viewing like it used to be with pages of slides laid out on a lighttable, only now on line, and so your images that match results are not buried on page 2 or page 200, but are displayed nearer the center of the mosaic, as relevant to the search terms entered by the seeker. The relevancy of the location of the display is based on the metadata associated with the image, rather than artificially ranked to get on a page 1 or 2 (there is no page 1 or 2, or 200). Our visual search approach enables an abundance of relevant imagery to be quickly seen by the buyer, which addresses a huge pain point for them (actually getting to see pictures!).

Also, images in our Everyday collection, including yours should they be there, are a result of a business relationship established between Dreamstime and BrightQube. Every image found on BrightQube, whether in Professional or Everyday collections (main difference between them being price and source), are available for licensing through legitimate business arrangements with agencies and collections. Whatever arrangement you have with Dreamstime is still honored here. We are just extending the searchable availability of your inventory in a new website that combines a broad spectrum of image sources to better serve a range of image buyers. Every image that has attributes associated with it when we ingested it into our searchable database retains those attributes.

I hope this clears things up a bit, and we're always happy to hear from you or anyone. Feedback is more than welcome. We're just getting started in creating a marketplace for visual media.

All the best,
Lee Corkran, Founder and CEO, BrightQube.

leaf · « **Reply #4 on:** May 21, 2008, 01:49 »

I like the UI of brightcube a lot. Well done.

louoates · « **Reply #5 on:** May 21, 2008, 09:31 »

Quote from: louoates on May 20, 2008, 18:22

This may be a growing trend but I didn't much like these two. The first didn't have any of my best images show up using my best keyword. The second's interface really sucked -- never did figure out how to scroll the screen. But it did show a bunch of my work (in Everyday mode, not Professional mode) but without attribution or where it was coming from. They could all be pirated for all I know.

Lee: Turned out --after I learned how to scroll on your site-- I like the way it works. I can instantly see how many images there are in total, then move around quickly to focus on what I want. It's also helpful to know that the images in Everyday mode stem from Dreamstime. Thanks for your response.

RacePhoto · « **Reply #6 on:** May 22, 2008, 00:30 »

Nice and the way it includes everything around the best matches is useful concept having the viewing without pages.

How is it that an image that I have on Dreamstime when I search for three or all four words from the exact title of the photo, doesn't show up? The same four words are in the description and the keywords and when I type them into the search at Dreamstime, it's the first photo that shows. (just discovered that tonight)

Are there some restrictions as to which images are showing in the BrightQube search? Exclusives only? Sizes? Or something else?

lee · « **Reply #7 on:** May 22, 2008, 03:40 »

Good question. That is a puzzler, at first glance. Feel free to send me the image (or a link to the image) and we'll check it out. My email is newbielink:mailto:[email protected] [nonactive]

Sometimes it may be the difference between their database and ours, since we periodically need to catch up on synching current updates, etc. with them.

As well, sometimes there are other ranking factors besides the metadata that put an image on the front page of a site, such as popularity in selling, etc., that we don't have or use. We currently base the relevancy of the return off of keywords, and their combination of use in the search querry.