A different angle in the ongoing Getty-Google giveaway scandal:

It's been speculated on this forum in the past that Getty's long-term goal is to put all microstock out of business. Those of you here at the time may remember when they bought Istock they dissolved the profitable Stockxpert agency very quickly, and discussion went around about their desire to hurt microstock as we know it. Perhaps their 5-10-year-plan includes the decimation if not total annihilation of the micro model. It may not make sense to those of us primarily involved in micro, but the giant Getty's lifeblood has always been macro. Note the secrecy of this move and how much of GI's wholly-owned content is involved in this giveaway (zero, I believe). If they perceive micro as eating away at their future, well....
Personally, I don't think they'll be able to do away with micro completely, but this sure appears to be a huge blow in that direction. Any short-term loss to their bottom line would be seen as collateral damage necessary on the way to ultimate victory. Not a conspiracy, just cutthroat business as practiced for centuries. And, after all, Getty Images is 100% a business and not a charity.

Thoughts?

I don't think they care enough to try to kill microstock in general, but I DO firmly believe they intend to run iStock into the ground... but just enough so they can say "Hey, look - this isn't working and we're just going to absorb iStock into Getty like we have with all these other collections over the years." That'll let them cut free tons of employees, not have to worry about keeping anyone happy or communicating with them and it'll allow them to just pay everyone 20%. Frankly, I'm shocked this hasn't happened already.

Getty feels that it is just too big to fall, so they tend to make "innovative"=stupid things. I do not think that they are trying to kill microstock, they simply want to find new ways to make money out of it. They could not care less about artists or content the only thing that maters is money... I hope that they will eventually fall

I'm sure they're trying to kill istock.  Why else would they be sending istock buyers to Thinkstock?  Don't think they're capable of killing off microstock because we have other sites to sell our images.  Perhaps they could of done it if they had bought SS, FT and DT.

Even if they gave away all the istock collection, buyers are still going to want new fresh images and all the stuff that istock doesn't have.

From the day i heard that getty bought istock, i was of the opinion that they were trying to buy the competition and get rid ofmicrostock altogether. Think of the attitudes of the traditional photogs...micro contributors have been the scum of the earth since day 1. From day 1 micro has been a boil on gettys butt and i still have no doubt that they will do whatever they need to so micro will disappear.

Yes and I told Lisa that back in 2008.  Eventually I am sure they will succeed.

Quote from: cclapper on January 16, 2013, 08:51

From the day i heard that getty bought istock, i was of the opinion that they were trying to buy the competition and get rid ofmicrostock altogether. Think of the attitudes of the traditional photogs...micro contributors have been the scum of the earth since day 1. From day 1 micro has been a boil on gettys butt and i still have no doubt that they will do whatever they need to so micro will disappear.

Yes and I told Lisa that back in 2008.  Eventually I am sure they will succeed.

You did indeed. 

Seems they are paying an awfully high price for it if this is just about getting rid of microstock.  They are giving away premium Getty content in these deals.  Seems like they are killing the host (entire RF industry) to get rid of  what they consider a parasite (microstock).  Rather shortsighted of them IMO.

I am not saying you guys are wrong, but if they were just trying to destroy micro, wouldn't they have confined their selection of images to indie TS images, since they are the content that populates all the other micros? 

And here is whatvi posted in another thread:

I suspect they are NOT shooting themselves in the foot in any way. They may have taken a hit financially short term, but in their long term plans they will a. (Try to) kill microstock and b. eliminate all the "riff-raff" (contributors not part of their elite group). Sounds like getty is right on target.

And when i say riff raff, i mean in their eyes. And when i say contributors, i mean exclusive to istock, non-exclusive to istock, whatever. I believe they want to narrow their pool of contributors and go back to charging big bucks for each image, as it was before. No one is privy to their strategy, so a lot of what they are doing, including the ms and google deals, look stupid to contributors. In the long run tho, i am totally convinced that the outcome will mean a lot of money for them, some good money for some, and nothing for the peons.

don't ask me from where but I remember iStock having 650k $ revenue per day, why ending that?

Getty feels that it is just too big to fall, so they tend to make "innovative"=stupid things. I do not think that they are trying to kill microstock, they simply want to find new ways to make money out of it. They could not care less about artists or content the only thing that maters is money... I hope that they will eventually fall

It just seems to me that if they've been trying to make IS profitable even for a quick dollar, they have done EVERYTHING wrong, everything to destroy their future.  Future=buyers+contributors.

Quote from: luissantos84 on January 16, 2013, 11:02

don't ask me from where but I remember iStock having 650k $ revenue per day, why ending that?

I doubt if their expectation is to make that nowadays, unless they also count in TS.

I believe this was back in 2010 perhaps

These people cannot even get the istock site to work properly, they have basically crashed the extremly active istock community and made everyone run away and hide in closed facebook groups or other forums. The traffic to istock keeps going down, the independents are all cheering Shutterstock and somebody seriously believes they have some "secret master plan" to destroy anything?

You need to be smarter than the other people in the industry to be more successful than them.

I see a lot of money being pumped in from the getty family.

But I don�t see the brainpower to dominate anything.

They�ll just crash istock and after that getty with it, then look for another investor to bail them out or the getty family puts up even more money.

And that is the real danger. They are not ready to do what the company needs to do - invest in optimising their own site, expand the company by growing organically instead of looking to buy other companies at much too high prices for something they could have easily done themselves.

Streamline communication and efficiency in their own business instead of having all the different departments work without being connected. Instill a business culture and a drive for excellence. Work on the week-end. No corporate double speak. No looking for the blame "ELSEWHERE" when it is obviously your own mess up.

Encourage people to take responsibility and get real life results, stop being "employee driven". Combining a line of buzzwords are not a form of work.

etc...

What I see is a management that is simply not ready to get their hands dirty with all the nerdy day to day details that need to be optimized. It is obviously a lot more fun to play around with impressive and cool sounding new software and dream of monetizing views, click, click, click for every eyeball. Become the next google adwords. In fact encourage google adwords to add little images like facebook and then get paid for every google click.

Instant money! Free Money! No work ever again!

Endless parties in the pink room...

No I am not worried about that. If they cannot get the community to work, cannot increase buyer traffic, their teams have no clue what is going on in the business, artists are deactivating content and leaving to other sites...no I don�t think anyone needs to be scared.

In the right hands this new technology might be really successful, maybe even a postive force for the industry. But I think you are all giving them too much credit if you fear them.

Whatever Masterplan they have - you can trust them to mess it up.

Their Macro side is dying on its arse as well, they're just running around with fire extinguishers wondering what to do next.
Getty remind me of Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now, a mad shaved headed old veteran chopping everything up and spouting nonsense.

There is no plan.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/WdNsltQXTVU

I was going for a bit of levity, oh well :-)