Author Topic: Downloads have Stopped (Read 28930 times)

Poncke · « **Reply #100 on:** November 21, 2012, 15:35 »

I dont get this, your sales plummet at IS, but you see an increase at DT and you are all ecstatic about it. In my books that doesnt make sense, in my books thats just balancing the books.

gillian vann · « **Reply #101 on:** November 21, 2012, 16:02 »

sort of. If I sold more on DT I'd make more cos they pay better than IS. I'd be happy to see DT move up.

lisafx · « **Reply #102 on:** November 21, 2012, 18:25 »

Quote from: Poncke on November 21, 2012, 15:35

I dont get this, your sales plummet at IS, but you see an increase at DT and you are all ecstatic about it. In my books that doesnt make sense, in my books thats just balancing the books.

Balancing the books beats all heck out of just losing money.

Not to mention that DT manages to keep their site running well and has continued to be more responsive than IS to contributor needs. Which is actually a huge understatement.

Jo Ann Snover · « **Reply #103 on:** November 21, 2012, 19:46 »

Slight tangent, but I came upon this article from April about Calgary stock start ups and their fates (not just about iStock). Seems that merry-go-round keeps on...

Reef · « **Reply #104 on:** November 21, 2012, 20:31 »

Quote from: jsnover on November 21, 2012, 19:46

Slight tangent, but I came upon this article from April about Calgary stock start ups and their fates (not just about iStock). Seems that merry-go-round keeps on...

Reading about EyeWire, it seems the writing is on the wall. Ouch!

Silberkorn · « **Reply #105 on:** November 22, 2012, 06:43 »

Quote from: jsnover on November 21, 2012, 19:46

Slight tangent, but I came upon this article from April about Calgary stock start ups and their fates (not just about iStock). Seems that merry-go-round keeps on...

Well written article which tells us unfortunately all about where the IS ship is heading.

“We always had a vision at Veer,” says Hutchinson of the difference. “I don’t believe Corbis has ever truly had one.”

ClaridgeJ · « **Reply #106 on:** November 22, 2012, 07:11 »

Quote from: Poncke on November 21, 2012, 15:35

I dont get this, your sales plummet at IS, but you see an increase at DT and you are all ecstatic about it. In my books that doesnt make sense, in my books thats just balancing the books.

Well to be able to balance the books is an art in itself. In accountancy that means it evens out, etc. Thats great news.

Cheers and bottoms up! Heineken!

rubyroo · « **Reply #107 on:** November 22, 2012, 07:21 »

Thanks for the very interesting link JSnover!

I particularly liked the last quote:

"Not one to despair, Zumwalt says, “the soil here just keeps getting richer and richer. It’s got opportunity written all over it.”"

Hopefully those opportunities will ripple in our direction too.

With all the gloom and doom spouted around here (lately even 'assumed doom'), it's important to remember that many of us have built substantial and high quality portfolios, and that these are portable where new opportunities present themselves.

Of course things will evolve, they always do. The important thing is to keep producing our best work in the meantime. If we all go into the mental doldrums, there'll be no 'spark' to fire our creativity.

Poncke · « **Reply #108 on:** November 22, 2012, 13:06 »

Quote from: lisafx on November 21, 2012, 18:25

Quote from: Poncke on November 21, 2012, 15:35
I dont get this, your sales plummet at IS, but you see an increase at DT and you are all ecstatic about it. In my books that doesnt make sense, in my books thats just balancing the books.

Balancing the books beats all heck out of just losing money.

Not to mention that DT manages to keep their site running well and has continued to be more responsive than IS to contributor needs. Which is actually a huge understatement.

Fair enough

B8 · « **Reply #109 on:** November 23, 2012, 04:50 »

I don't even have words to describe the current RC=0 debacle and the royalty percentages dropping down to 25% for everyone across the board, thus cutting some people's royalty percentage to nearly in half. And in all of the speculation that has been made about the long term viability of iStock exclusives to earn a decent income from iStock, I don’t think anyone ever fathomed the scenario where the company is so poorly managed that it just destroys itself slowly and painfully, whilst letting its massive archive of fantastic, high quality imagery get to a point where it is hardly a sellable/desirable commodity to photo buyers anymore because it becomes too difficult to simply find or inspect the product you are looking for once you find it.

It is amazing what we are witnessing now for the last 3 months, and even slowly over the last 6-8 months before that with the huge list of newly created site bugs every month. If you told anyone the story how a hugely successful, multimillion dollar internet company imploded itself by destroying their own web site and all its good will with buyers and sellers by being too greedy to reach into their own pockets to hire enough (or just good enough web programmers) to run and further develop the site so that it would continue to draw in millions of dollars of buyer revenue, nobody would even believe you.

rubyroo · « **Reply #110 on:** November 23, 2012, 05:36 »

It's important to remember this quote I think:

"Nothing will change for them, just like the Hellman deal didn't change anything for them."

From this interview:

http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-photography/news/2199115/-nothing-will-change-for-our-contributors-says-getty-images-ceo

aspp · « **Reply #111 on:** November 23, 2012, 06:58 »

Quote from: B8 on November 23, 2012, 04:50

too greedy to reach into their own pockets to hire enough (or just good enough web programmers)

Perhaps the people they need do not want IStockphoto on their CV these days.

I also wonder whether the poor reputation of IStock may encourage buyers to shop elsewhere. I think that people avoid brands which are no longer perceived as cool. And the high prices charged for over-supplied RF content may also be why some of the boutique agencies and collections elsewhere seem to enjoying a new dawn. Buyers getting used to higher prices again may actually benefit niche suppliers elsewhere. Meanwhile Shutterstock increasingly attracts everyone who just needs large amounts of easily affordable RF from a site which is reliable.

iStop · « **Reply #112 on:** November 23, 2012, 16:27 »

Maybe the web developers who are job hunting for IT jobs in Calgary are aware of how problematic the old platform that the iStock site is built on is and don't want to have anything to do with it. The people working in IT probably don't care about the external reputation if the pay is good, but don't want the headache of trying to maintain a content management site riddled with bugs and that is barely being held together with band aids. Would you? Just knowing how slow the site runs and seeing how long the bug lists are, most qualified web developers would probably say no thanks.

stockastic · « **Reply #113 on:** November 23, 2012, 16:46 »

"Complexity kills."
- Ray Ozzie, Microsoft CTO 2005-2010

StanRohrer · « **Reply #114 on:** November 23, 2012, 19:12 »

I'm betting the IT folks are porting the old iStock site into the Getty servers and site design. This is the integration of iStock into Getty. Hence every time another chunk of iStock code moves there are unknown links that are broken. Every time the chunk fires up on the Getty scheme there has to be more unique side code written to keep the features (such as zoom) working for previous iStock users. Whatever is happening, it is a shame that so many features are continually broken.

lisafx · « **Reply #115 on:** November 24, 2012, 20:27 »

Quote from: StanRohrer on November 23, 2012, 19:12

I'm betting the IT folks are porting the old iStock site into the Getty servers and site design. This is the integration of iStock into Getty. Hence every time another chunk of iStock code moves there are unknown links that are broken. Every time the chunk fires up on the Getty scheme there has to be more unique side code written to keep the features (such as zoom) working for previous iStock users. Whatever is happening, it is a shame that so many features are continually broken.

Folks, I think we have a winner in the speculation game. This makes the most sense of any hypothesis I've read.

tee · « **Reply #116 on:** November 24, 2012, 23:03 »

iStock code isn't "moving" over to Getty. Getty has a solid system that works, and they would import (copy) files and data from iStock's database, not the other way around. If the bridge between the two sites were to break, it wouldn't affect iStock at all, just as when Vetta was mirrored on Getty those images didn't disappear on iStock. This is assuming they have someone competent at the controls, though.

gillian vann · « **Reply #117 on:** November 25, 2012, 00:34 »

are ppl still uploading? is it that bad that you think the end is coming?

Jo Ann Snover · « **Reply #118 on:** November 25, 2012, 01:31 »

Quote from: vannphoto on November 25, 2012, 00:34

are ppl still uploading? is it that bad that you think the end is coming?

I'm not uploading to IS at the moment, but only because the site and the handling of new images have been in such a mess since the September code changes. The end of iStock's internal code running the site isn't the end of iStock as a business, although if they don't manage things better it might end up that way!

I think Getty's trying to whittle away at costs and Stan's right that one of those moves is getting the iStock site running using Getty back end technologies so they can cut back or eliminate the Calgary IT staff. Given that there's been no real innovating at iStock in a while I can't see any loss of having Getty code running the iStock site - assuming they can do that without totally effing up sales and royalty tracking (in particular I don't think there's any Getty royalty calculation that parallels the godforsaken RC scheme that IS has, so if they're to keep royalties different at iStock, they do have to invent some code to get the Getty back end to do something other than multiply by .20 (the Getty royalty).

I think we can expect more breakage as they work through this process.

Jo Ann Snover · « **Reply #119 on:** November 27, 2012, 11:00 »

I checked out my sales this morning and noticed that I have another case of the last 20 sales including each of the 9 years I've been submitting to iStock (which doesn't happen often). I assume a bit of fiddling trying to fix the best match has brought this about. Can sometimes be bad news for newer contributors if lots of older files are selling...

ShadySue · « **Reply #120 on:** November 27, 2012, 11:35 »

Quote from: jsnover on November 25, 2012, 01:31

Given that there's been no real innovating at iStock in a while I can't see any loss of having Getty code running the iStock site - assuming they can do that without totally effing up sales and royalty tracking.

One thing I would be concerned about is that it seems that a lot of/all (?) of the additions and disambiguations wihch have been added to the iStock CV won't be in the Getty CV, so the mappings will be poor.

I still wonder if, at this stage, the RC tracking has been 'worth it'. So many things keep breaking since then. Of course, if they are going to squeeze us further along the line, the balance will be in their favour.

aspp · « **Reply #121 on:** November 27, 2012, 11:43 »

Quote from: ShadySue on November 27, 2012, 11:35

if they are going to squeeze us further along the line

if ?

ShadySue · « **Reply #122 on:** November 27, 2012, 11:44 »

Quote from: aspp on November 27, 2012, 11:43

Quote from: ShadySue on November 27, 2012, 11:35
if they are going to squeeze us further along the line

if ?

Quite.

aspp · « **Reply #123 on:** November 27, 2012, 16:21 »

Are you confident that all sales are being recorded ? Keeping in mind that nothing else works, stats and what not.

gostwyck · « **Reply #124 on:** November 27, 2012, 16:34 »

Quote from: aspp on November 27, 2012, 16:21

Are you confident that all sales are being recorded ? Keeping in mind that nothing else works, stats and what not.

No, I'm not. There is nothing about iStock that currently inspires 'confidence'.

MicrostockGroup Sponsors

Author Topic: Downloads have Stopped (Read 28930 times)

Poncke

gillian vann

lisafx

Jo Ann Snover

Reef

Silberkorn

ClaridgeJ

rubyroo

Poncke

B8

rubyroo

aspp

iStop

stockastic

StanRohrer

lisafx

tee

gillian vann

Jo Ann Snover

Jo Ann Snover

ShadySue

aspp

ShadySue

aspp

gostwyck

Related Topics

Sponsors

Microstock Poll Results

Sponsors