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Author Topic: Collections growth, looking back on why.  (Read 3806 times)

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« on: July 01, 2014, 06:29 »
+5
The massive collections growth at istock,  why?  Was there even one reason for it.    Has it had a benefit??  The massive black hole as it is known seems to have damaged istock,  both  for contributors and customers,, I wonder how it has been for istock profit.  It seems all of this could have been forseen by anyone, everyone.  It is however still occurring right,  why?


Goofy

« Reply #1 on: July 01, 2014, 09:36 »
0
The massive collections growth at istock,  why?  Was there even one reason for it.    Has it had a benefit??  The massive black hole as it is known seems to have damaged istock,  both  for contributors and customers,, I wonder how it has been for istock profit.  It seems all of this could have been forseen by anyone, everyone.  It is however still occurring right,  why?

Not just iStock- what about the 47 million plus images on Alamy?

« Reply #2 on: July 01, 2014, 10:09 »
0
I don't understand the question. Is it why are people uploading or why are they accepting so many images or something else?

« Reply #3 on: July 01, 2014, 11:24 »
+4
I took the question to be "Why is Getty ruining iStock by dumping files there". It's been talked about before, but I think they're trying to squeeze out revenue in the short term and they mistakenly think this will help

iStock's Alexa rank (and thus I assume traffic) is much better than Getty's. They're hoping to exploit it, but they're just smothering iStock

« Reply #4 on: July 01, 2014, 13:43 »
+13
Basically they changed the concept from quality to quantity.
They threw away years of hard labour from both contributors and reviewers.
The only reason to ever to do such a drastic move would be that the concept was near death, or worse.

They threw away years of hard labour... because it was not sustainable anymore ( and havent we heard that a few times)
What they misunderstood, was, that it was not the images that were not sustainable, but their greedy culture, that I would compare to a pyramid scheme.
Meaning, they thrived on an ongoing expansion in the customers base, that once the financial crisis set in, was unsustainable. Yes that it was, but they told us, it was us, who were unsustainable, when it actually were them.

« Reply #5 on: July 08, 2014, 07:55 »
0
The massive collections growth at istock,  why?  Was there even one reason for it.    Has it had a benefit??  The massive black hole as it is known seems to have damaged istock,  both  for contributors and customers,, I wonder how it has been for istock profit.  It seems all of this could have been forseen by anyone, everyone.  It is however still occurring right,  why?
This move from quality to quantity is a part
Of their new plan how to compate against SS.
As Yuri said there will a big changes in upcoming months.
Others parts of this plan are
Adding chip subscription plans to iStock.
Closing Thinkstock and concentrating all the forces in one place.
Trying to keep exclusives by throwing 100% royalties day etc.


« Reply #6 on: July 08, 2014, 09:26 »
+6
Not a mystery. Since Shutterstock has more images (like what, 30 million now?) it's moved istock to second place and the Carlyle Group has been taking notice. So the solution has been to dump as many images as Getty has into istock and lower the standards for acceptance. They are hoping to improve sales (good luck) and for each image added, it can be counted as an asset on the books. If they cannot improve the sales then they can at least say "But we've have increased our total images from this million to that million" and try to use that as positive news. What you're seeing is a corporate version of "keeping up with the Joneses".

« Reply #7 on: July 08, 2014, 09:56 »
0
they tested price points too far and started losing sales and customer base. the heat came down from the top to fix it and they had to do something to report back that they were working on it by doing things like adding more content, making back room deals, customer research, tweaking search, adding subscriptions, messing with layout and probably other things we don't know about.

some changes were for the better and some were not. time will tell if they can fix it. but much of the damage is done and lasting or intended to last or remain unchanged indefinitely.

« Reply #8 on: July 08, 2014, 11:29 »
0
I hadn't uploaded to most of these places for a few years until this year, and I found most of them seemed more lenient than they did before. I don't know if they realized they were wrong about rejecting for certain reasons or they just want more content.

Shelma1

  • stockcoalition.org
« Reply #9 on: July 08, 2014, 12:07 »
+4
I think it was a combination of both. They lowered their standards and also changed their rules when they realized they were missing out on images that were selling well elsewhere (I still remember them saying "don't tell us how well an image sells elsewhere after we've rejected it").

An example of what I consider a myopic POV was their refusal, until recently, to accept any image with "type" in it...even if the "type" was hand-drawn. Meanwhile typography-based images were selling like hotcakes over on SS. Right now hand lettering is a huge trend in the advertising and design marketplace.

They had this strict set of rules they set for themselves at the beginning and realized years too late that they'd fallen way behind. Then to make up for lost time they started accepting almost everything.

« Reply #10 on: July 08, 2014, 13:33 »
+1
This massive collection growth at iStock will be balanced by other agencies collections growth as many
iStock exclusives are dropping their crowns during this summer and will flood other agencies with their ports.
Though the ex-exclusives photos are way better then the crap the low quality content being added to iStock.

ShadySue

  • There is a crack in everything
« Reply #11 on: July 08, 2014, 15:55 »
+2
^^ which conversely means that there will also be a lot more good quality images at Main prices on iStock, competing with their own images elsewhere. This of course was inevitable once buyers could filter out most exclusive content with the price slider.

« Reply #12 on: July 08, 2014, 15:56 »
0
^^ which conversely means that there will also be a lot more good quality images at Main prices on iStock, competing with their own images elsewhere. This of course was inevitable once buyers could filter out most exclusive content with the price slider.
Good point.


 

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