MicrostockGroup
Agency Based Discussion => iStockPhoto.com => Topic started by: JoeClemson on March 04, 2014, 11:35
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Can't get the iStock website to show (UK, Chrome). Just gives me a message:
An error occurred while processing your request.
Reference #97.eb9a1645.1393950739.314eeeb
Anybody else?
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Same here. Ontario, Canada.
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Same everywhere ::)
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Now the error message is:
"Gateway Timeout
The proxy server did not receive a timely response from the upstream server."
It isn't the first time they've had problems with giving a "timely response." ;)
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They are updating the front page ;D ;D
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"The glitch monsters are at work down in the dark internety room, but they sent a note up that said: “Dear You, Me fix broken thing. Sorry for trouble. Love, Monsters.”
They, and the site, will be back up soon."
Hopefully, their 8-year old clients enjoyed that extremely hilarious message.
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"The glitch monsters are at work down in the dark internety room, but they sent a note up that said: “Dear You, Me fix broken thing. Sorry for trouble. Love, Monsters.”
They, and the site, will be back up soon."
Hopefully, their 8-year old clients enjoyed that extremely hilarious message.
Just embarrassing, and on top of that, we get to lose 10% because of their incompetence.
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This is something bigger
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probably adding in the new subs feature to screw us more... :-[
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Looks like over 4 hours so far. :(
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I think the 8 year olds are working in IT today its a school field trip :o
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This is something bigger
couldn't expected any less from you, you are really a devoted iStock soul
I meant a truly dedicated contributor not other thing
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This is something bigger
couldn't expected any less from you, you are really a devoted iStock soul ;D
Smiley noticed, but that's Libel.
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I think this is our new Bone us oh sorry I mean bonus ;D
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This is something bigger
couldn't expected any less from you, you are really a devoted iStock soul ;D
Smiley noticed, but that's Libel.
just googled that one, committing a crime? oh boy, had no idea, jokes aside
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The glitch monsters are at work down in the dark internety room, but they sent a note up that said: “Dear You, Me fix broken thing. Sorry for trouble. Love, Monsters.”
They, and the site, will be back up soon. In the meantime, we’d like to offer you 10% off your next purchase of 50 or more iStock credits using the coupon code below. -> They will have another reason to cut our earnings again!
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No No that is your bonus, you must think more positive at the discount will bring more buyers!
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Sean is on them, hunting their twitter feed for stocksy customers :)
https://twitter.com/iStock/status/440876736956219393
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Sean is on them, hunting their twitter feed for stocksy customers :)
https://twitter.com/iStock/status/440876736956219393
Loving it! Nicely done Sean!
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Sean is on them, hunting their twitter feed for stocksy customers :)
https://twitter.com/iStock/status/440876736956219393
Ha ha! Bold and hilarious! Just had to favorite one of his posts.
PS.. sad for the contribs missing out on sales though!
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Now that is funny, I can't blame Sean! Smart
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Right, but he's still given iStock customers better service than iStock is giving them. Look at this conversation
(http://www.digitalbristles.com/temp/sjlocke-cust-svs.jpg)
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They're giving up selling our images for Lent.
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Get em, Sean!
:)
I really don't get where people got the idea that iStock is the only place on the planet to buy stock images. All these years into this and we're still fighting to overcome the idea that they're the only game in town.
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https://twitter.com/LaunchSync/status/440913513465126913
You'd think iStock might try to one-up Sean and offer something bigger than a measly 10% off :)
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Right, but he's still given iStock customers better service than iStock is giving them. Look at this conversation
Unfortunately, the only image I had was in an article on increasing prices ;) .
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Don't know if it's related but StockXpert.com is down for me, too...
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Changing the File of the Week turned out to be more challenging than expected.
The person who knew how to do it had been banned by Lobo.
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are they updating something, or something is down ? It's been a while now and can'T find what's going on exactly as usual !
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No need to disable images or leave the site, doesn't matter when they aren't available to the buyers anyway.
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are they updating something, or something is down ? It's been a while now and can'T find what's going on exactly as usual !
Quote from their site:
"The glitch monsters are at work down in the dark internety room, but they sent a note up that said: “Dear You, Me fix broken thing. Sorry for trouble. Love, Monsters.”
They, and the site, will be back up soon. In the meantime, we’d like to offer you 10% off your next purchase of 50 or more iStock credits using the coupon code below.
BYTES2011 (valid for one week)."
The coupon code makes me believe they just copied the text from the last major disaster - otherwise it would be BYTES2014, wouldn't it?
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Watching pros at work is so exciting ;D
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Watching pros at work is so exciting ;D
Ah yes. What was Yuri's favourite phrase again?
Got it ... "Professionals deal with professionals"
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Watching pros at work is so exciting ;D
Ah yes. What was Yuri's favourite phrase again?
Got it ... "Professionals deal with professionals"
Maybe it should be "Internety monsters deal with internety monsters"
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Tune of the day: Radiohead Down Is the New Up
Radiohead - Down Is The New Up [In Rainbows Disc 2] (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CX7Qzb1dj8#)
Get yourself together
Let the light pour in
Pour yourself a hot bath
Pour yourself a drink
Nothing's gonna happen without warning
Down is the new up
What is up, buttercup?
Down is the new up
Is the new up
Your services
Are not required
Your future's bleak
You're so last week
Ladies and gentlemen
Without a safety net
I shall now perform a 180 flip-flop
I shall now amputate
I shall now contort
Because down is the new up
What if I just flip-flop?
Down is the new up
Down is the new up
Down is the new up
Is the new up
You crawled off and left us
You crawled off and left us
You crawled off and left us
All on candid camera
The chink in your armour
Topsy turvy town
Topsy turvy town
Shake your pockets out
Pass it on
Pass it down
Topsy turvy town
Topsy turvy town
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If an outage this long was not planned then we are truly shafted! If this was planned then there should have been an announcement!
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How can they be so totally and persistently incompetent?
Why do they not test things thoroughly before rolling stuff out?
Why can't they just take a step back to what was actually up earlier today?
Eejits.
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If an outage this long was not planned then we are truly shafted! If this was planned then there should have been an announcement!
Looking at their frantic twittering asking for "patience" and thanking for "support" I'd bet the only thing planned today was a visit from the office masseuse...
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Maybe this is The Anonymous group reaction of the recoupment PP haha !
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SS had a outage last week...it was a DDOS attack.
Now Istock.... maybe they are related?
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Quote: "The glitch monsters are at work down in the dark internety room, but they sent a note up that said: “Dear You, Me fix broken thing. Sorry for trouble. Love, Monsters.”
I'd expect this from that knobhead Bieber's website where it might be appropriate for the eleven years old audience - NOT FROM A SITE SUPPOSEDLY RUN BY PROFESSIONAL ADULTS!!!!
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Odd: the twee monster message appears only in English and German. The French and the Spanish are spared. Wonder why.
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Six hours +
Ouch. That's gotta hurt.
Not just in lost sales but whatever 'good will' they still have with their our customers.
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" we have our whole web team working hard to fix our site" .... I guess there's a lot of hair being torn out and blood pressure pills being dropped by now. You've got to feel sorry for the people struggling to make the thing work again, haven't you? I'm sure we've all been in similar straits from time to time.
This will probably knock two or three percent off their month's figures.
I find it hard to believe that they've just wheeled out the peurile crash notice from 2011 again. You would think they got the message about how unprofessional it is the first time round. People running up against a deadline for a project might not find it very funny.
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Odd: the twee monster message appears only in English and German. The French and the Spanish are spared. Wonder why.
I see English (if you call this message English...) French, German, Spanish and Chinese (I assume - very sorry if it's Japanese). Could it be different by country?
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Customers talk :(
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Interesting that StockXchng and StockXpert are both down, too. All connected?
Getty, TS and Photos.com are all working.
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Odd: the twee monster message appears only in English and German. The French and the Spanish are spared. Wonder why.
I see English (if you call this message English...) French, German, Spanish and Chinese (I assume - very sorry if it's Japanese). Could it be different by country?
The monsters only appear in English and German, in Spanish and French people get a professional message saying that they experience problems, are working on a solution and offer a discount to make up for the troubles. Can't read the Japanese...
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Interesting that StockXchng and StockXpert are both down, too. All connected?
Getty, TS and Photos.com are all working.
Probably working on making sure we don't get 'Over Paid' again on the PP... ???
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Are the glitch monsters the only ones working at IS?
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Interesting that StockXchng and StockXpert are both down, too. All connected?
Maybe an attack then.
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Japanese is often not so bad translated by google:
"This page is not working. We apologize for the inconvenience, please wait for a while. I do it and apologize, we will give you a coupon code for 10% discount which is available at the time of the purchase of 50 or more credit next time."
Same as the French message
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Anyone know whats the longest time iStock has ever been down?
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I think it was that time the truck ran over the power/network lines in Calgary which was more than a day. After that they made redundant servers which supposedly would take care of unforeseen catastrophic physical events which are not code related.
I think they tweaked the code for some new feature/performance patch or set of bug fixes and it broke something essential in the code.
Maybe they added 4k video upload options :P
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2 OnDemand sales, I wonder if it is because of iStock down? I had last one in Feb :)
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This is off one of the partner sites, also down?
"New Customers save 14% on iStock credits! Use promo code: NEWPIK14"
www.freepik.com (http://www.freepik.com)
on the banner above the istock banner (?what ever?)
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I suppose the longer it is down the more of a discount they will offer buyers on our images.
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Lol, now they're the #istockfamily ...
https://twitter.com/search?q=%23istockfamily&src=hash&f=realtime
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I think they consider you family Sean so join on in ;D
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I think they consider you family Sean so join on in ;D
Just the red headed stepchild now.
(lol at Semmick)
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How about a fricken 10% royalty bump for contributors for crying out loud!!
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Lobo's hammer is rotting!
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How about a fricken 10% royalty bump for contributors for crying out loud!!
They certainly owe us something for not 'selling our work online' which we pay them a LOT to do.
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I'll bet this guy isn't the only one going elsewhere...
https://twitter.com/iStock/status/440949963132915712
And I loved Ron's #lostalltouchwithreality :)
BTW I wonder if this guy considers Sean a spammer...
https://twitter.com/MikeDLacy/status/440949200117710848
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Yeah, that was directed at me, so I deleted my tweet to him. Honestly, if you're going to rant in a big open room, you should expect a response you may not have been expecting.
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Let's see if my 2011 prediction did in fact come true....
The same people that wrote the code are now fixing it. The same people that are fixing it will write the next code. So I can only see more and longer outages. Eventually we will hit one where the accounting is so screwed up that iStock will have to admit it can't be fixed. Oh that will be a bad day - but I see it coming in the trends.
TPTB see Glory Land across the river. The worker bees are taking bridge parts from behind them and laying them in front. At some point in the middle the bridge is disconnected from land at both ends. And great was the fall thereof.
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Somehow hashtags in French seem cuter - from a customer via Twitter "iStock est down. #joie"
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Sean is on them, hunting their twitter feed for stocksy customers :)
https://twitter.com/iStock/status/440876736956219393
I don't want to offend anyone, but I probably will. This is just pathetic, regardless of how much I don't like iStock.
Or maybe I'm just conservative and have an outdated view on professionalism, and this is how you do marketing in the modern times. In any case, I would never spam like this.
Go ahead, downvote.
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As a side thought...
I'm in IT, and lately it seems that more and more the business side of things are driving conversions from legacy (old ) systems to new (windows/web based) systems.
The one thing I have noticed on multiple projects is the objections of the IT people to slow it down or design some redundancy into a project are shot down by the business side. Data clean up, parallel production, testing and correcting development before going live are things of the past in this new world.
The Project Time Line is KING - and all other considerations don't matter.
This has resulted in some interesting problems when they try to 'go live' with a project that has shown, in testing, to fail miserably but they go forward anyways with the "We Will Fix It Later" motto.
Makes me go hmmmmm...
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Sean is on them, hunting their twitter feed for stocksy customers :)
https://twitter.com/iStock/status/440876736956219393
I don't want to offend anyone, but I probably will. This is just pathetic, regardless of how much I don't like iStock.
Or maybe I'm just conservative and have an outdated view on professionalism, and this is how you do marketing in the modern times. In any case, I would never spam like this.
Go ahead, downvote.
I don't see it as spamming. As I see it, twitter is a big open room with everyone yelling. If I want to yell about something in response to someone else yelling, especially when there's an opportunity like 8 hours of downtime, to offer an alternative, what's wrong with that? It's not automated, and it isn't offensive. So we'll have to disagree. :)
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spike - what is pathetic is how istock treated Sean. A response like this is light hearted humour compared to how they treated him.
And yes, it´s modern guerrilla marketing. Happens all the time on social media.
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I don't see it as spamming. As I see it, twitter is a big open room with everyone yelling. If I want to yell about something in response to someone else yelling, especially when there's an opportunity like 8 hours of downtime, to offer an alternative, what's wrong with that? It's not automated, and it isn't offensive. So we'll have to disagree. :)
You could have tweeted "@istock is down, if you want to buy at a stock agency that's online, check #stocksy" or something similar, once, as a reply to their site experiencing downtime. I'm sure everybody who's interested would see you message (it was near the top of the list, right?). This is just spamming by my criteria. Then again, maybe I don't understand how twitter and life in general work. Whatever. :)
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Sean is on them, hunting their twitter feed for stocksy customers :)
https://twitter.com/iStock/status/440876736956219393
I don't want to offend anyone, but I probably will. This is just pathetic, regardless of how much I don't like iStock.
Or maybe I'm just conservative and have an outdated view on professionalism, and this is how you do marketing in the modern times. In any case, I would never spam like this.
Go ahead, downvote.
I won't vote you down, but there is a certain history involving Sean and iStock which has led to some bitterness, added to which iStock is not noted for the courtesy and kindliness with which it treats anybody doing business with it, so I reckon it is fair game.
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Sean is on them, hunting their twitter feed for stocksy customers :)
https://twitter.com/iStock/status/440876736956219393
I don't want to offend anyone, but I probably will. This is just pathetic, regardless of how much I don't like iStock.
Or maybe I'm just conservative and have an outdated view on professionalism, and this is how you do marketing in the modern times. In any case, I would never spam like this.
Go ahead, downvote.
It was Getty that decided they wanted Sean as a competitor ... rather than one of their most successful contributors. Now they are reaping what they sowed.
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Sean is on them, hunting their twitter feed for stocksy customers :)
https://twitter.com/iStock/status/440876736956219393
I don't want to offend anyone, but I probably will. This is just pathetic, regardless of how much I don't like iStock.
Or maybe I'm just conservative and have an outdated view on professionalism, and this is how you do marketing in the modern times. In any case, I would never spam like this.
Go ahead, downvote.
You think it's wrong to try to help people who can't buy images they need for project deadlines?
You'd rather the customers just failed?
And, as has been said already, after they way they treated Sean, he's got every right.
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It was Getty that decided they wanted Sean as a competitor ... rather than one of their most successful contributors. Now they are reaping what they sowed.
Can you imagine iStock repeatedly tweeting something similar to what Sean tweeted if Stocksy were to experience downtime?
It's hard, right?
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Sean is on them, hunting their twitter feed for stocksy customers :)
https://twitter.com/iStock/status/440876736956219393
I don't want to offend anyone, but I probably will. This is just pathetic, regardless of how much I don't like iStock.
Or maybe I'm just conservative and have an outdated view on professionalism, and this is how you do marketing in the modern times. In any case, I would never spam like this.
Go ahead, downvote.
You think it's wrong to try to help people who can't buy images they need for project deadlines?
You'd rather the customers just failed?
And, as has been said already, after they way they treated Sean, he's got every right.
That's what I was thinking -- he was offering help to people under deadlines, and as I recall, he even got a thank you. I've seen a couple of suggestions from others that they visit other sites.
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You think it's wrong to try to help people who can't buy images they need for project deadlines?
You'd rather the customers just failed?
And, as has been said already, after they way they treated Sean, he's got every right.
If the only intention was to help, he could have sent private messages. Also, could have helped by just replying once.
Additionally, do you think buyers are idiots? That they can't find another stock agency?
All of this is very naive in order to justify something unprofessional. And fine, do it as much as you want, I just don't agree with it or consider it professional, regardless of who the contributor is. It's like here you can't say one negative thing about certain people, which isn't really untypical in isolated small online communities, but still kinda sucks.
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Can you imagine iStock tweeting something similar to what Sean tweeted if Stocksy were to experience downtime, repeatedly?
No, because they probably cannot react so fast. They need more time to think, to act.
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It was Getty that decided they wanted Sean as a competitor ... rather than one of their most successful contributors. Now they are reaping what they sowed.
Can you imagine iStock repeatedly tweeting something similar to what Sean tweeted if Stocksy were to experience downtime?
It's hard, right?
They've done so much that offends me so much more ...
YMMV.
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It was Getty that decided they wanted Sean as a competitor ... rather than one of their most successful contributors. Now they are reaping what they sowed.
Can you imagine iStock repeatedly tweeting something similar to what Sean tweeted if Stocksy were to experience downtime?
It's hard, right?
It's hard because Sean is an individual and iStock is a corporate entity, added to which there is the issue of the assymmetry of power, where the stronger party confers credibility on the weaker through a direct challenge.
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No, because they probably cannot react so fast. They need more time to think, to act.
Ha-ha.
Replace iStock with shutterstock. Or ask yourself why shutterstock didn't reply to that tweet saying "come here, our web is up". Or any other normal stock agency.
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It's Back
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No, because they probably cannot react so fast. They need more time to think, to act.
Ha-ha.
Replace iStock with shutterstock. Or ask yourself why shutterstock didn't reply to that tweet saying "come here, our web is up". Or any other normal stock agency.
But Sean isn't a stock agency and I doubt if he is acting on behalf of Stocksy.
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It's Back
But it's incredibly slow for something that should have no traffic load on it right now.
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It's hard because Sean is an individual and iStock is a corporate entity, added to which there is the issue of the assymmetry of power, where the stronger party confers credibility on the weaker through a direct challenge.
You know, this reminds me of the political situation in my country.
There's always two parties struggling for power. And when it's election time, advertisements for both pop up all around, of course. And then I sometimes see one of the advertisements sprayed with a message like "THE PARTY X IS SH*T", "THE PARTY X DESTROYED OUR COUNTRY" or something similar. And what I always think then is, ok, I won't give my vote to the other party, since they obviously go so low to spray the competition with such messages. I don't see party x destroying the posters of party y. Therefore, in that regard, party x is better.
If I were a buyer, I'd stay away from stocksy because of this.
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The most recent forum posts (on any subject) were over 7 hours ago. People have no idea the sites back up and running again.
No doubt the infamous Lobo will be posting something of an explanation unless they've all gone home for the day :)
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Additionally, do you think buyers are idiots? That they can't find another stock agency?
Some of them can't. I answered several questions specifically about where to look elsewhere.
As for direct messaging, again, they asked in the open air of twitter. They didn't send their concerns in a direct message, so I answer in the open air.
All of this is very naive in order to justify something unprofessional. And fine, do it as much as you want, I just don't agree with it or consider it professional, regardless of who the contributor is. It's like here you can't say one negative thing about certain people, which isn't really untypical in isolated small online communities, but still kinda sucks.
Actually, you haven't yet said why it's "unprofessional". That's ok though - don't worry, you're not hurting my feelings.
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It's Back
With the Valentine's Day picture still on the Front Page. ::)
Still, at least it's up.
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If I were a buyer, I'd stay away from stocksy because of this.
And that is your right. Sean can draw his own conclusions about whether or not it was an effective tactic.
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From Lobo:
"Hello all. Yes, we most certainly were down today. We experienced some serious technical issues that had caused the site to effectively vanish from the internet. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.
We are also aware we had a resurrection of the 'Glitch Monster' Site Down page. Please also accept our apologies for that.
You were all probably wondering if maybe Valentine's Day is still being celebrated in Calgary. It's not, it's queued to be changed this week.
Again, we are very sorry for the downtime."
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=359622&page=1]
[url]http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=359622&page=1 (http://[url)[/url]
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Some of them can't. I answered several questions specifically about where to look elsewhere.
As for direct messaging, again, they asked in the open air of twitter. They didn't send their concerns in a direct message, so I answer in the open air.
Well ok, whatever comforts you. If you believe you haven't behaved unprofessionally and that your sole reason for tweeting the same thing multiple times was "just helping others", there isn't much I can say or do. I can only choose to not believe you, what I actually opted for.
Also the other ones defending you that you are just helping others, like people can't type "microstock agency" in google, I don't know if they're being naive or just justifying your unprofessionalism under the pretext of helping because you're known in this community.
Whatever the case may be, it's yours and their choice, as mine is mine. I might not share the popular opinions around here, but at least I'm not phased by certain figures and am honest about my intentions and attitudes. Case closed for me. :)
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If I were a buyer, I'd stay away from stocksy because of this.
And that is your right. Sean can draw his own conclusions about whether or not it was an effective tactic.
I don't have any direct correlation, but it's my 3rd best day for downloads since site open :) . Shutterstock not so much. I guess people aren't as likely to jump into a subscription, thinking that's all they have.
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Well ok, whatever comforts you. If you believe you haven't behaved unprofessionally and that your sole reason for tweeting the same thing multiple times was "just helping others", there isn't much I can say or do. I can only choose to not believe you, what I actually opted for.
Also the other ones defending you that you are just helping others, like people can't type "microstock agency" in google, I don't know if they're being naive or just justifying your unprofessionalism under the pretext of helping because you're known in this community.
Whatever the case may be, it's yours and their choice, as mine is mine. I might not share the popular opinions around here, but at least I'm not phased by certain figures and am honest about my intentions and attitudes. Case closed for me. :)
I don't think I said my sole reason was anything. Obviously, I was doing some marketing, and hopefully it helped some people as well. As I already pointed out, people were asking for alternatives. And I did get a couple of thanks.
Again, you haven't said why it was "unprofessional", so I have to continue to disregard that. :)
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With no interest in either agency, I'd rather iS's lost buyers went to stocksy than to DP, which I read a buyer said she was doing.
Her choice, of course, but do we as sellers really want buyers going there?
Mind you, good luck to Stocksy buyers getting past the poor search results.
(As it was mentioned in the twitter thread, I tried 'ice cream'. There's something badly wrong with the Stocksy search engine. Some irrelevant files I clicked on don't actually have 'ice cream' in their keywords (maybe it was getting fooled by the US-English term 'frosting'?)
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(As it was mentioned in the twitter thread, I tried 'ice cream'. There's something badly wrong with the Stocksy search engine. Some irrelevant files I clicked on don't actually have 'ice cream' in their keywords (maybe it was getting fooled by the US-English term 'frosting'?)
I'll let them know. Thx.
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It was Getty that decided they wanted Sean as a competitor ... rather than one of their most successful contributors. Now they are reaping what they sowed.
Can you imagine iStock repeatedly tweeting something similar to what Sean tweeted if Stocksy were to experience downtime?
It's hard, right?
If they had something to offer customers - like a coupon for your first purchase on iStock - I don't see how that's different from competitive upgrades which are offered all the time. You get the upgrade price on Adobe Illustrator if you're a Corel Draw user.
Netflix ran an ad recently mocking Amazon's drone prototype, and then there are all the I'm a Mac I'm a PC ads - it's not at all out of line to use a competitor's misfortune or idiotic eff ups to step in and swipe a customer or two
It's not as if Sean gate crashed a private party or started telling everyone that iStock's IT was among the worst on the planet, or Lobo.....
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Out for 5 or 6 hours, they come back, but still couldn't manage to remove the Valentine's pic from the landing page. :o
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Out for 5 or 6 hours, they come back, but still couldn't manage to remove the Valentine's pic from the landing page. :o
maybe the deployment didn't go well, and they had to revert??
pure speculation.
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Ok, this is new to me... Twitter spam? So if you complain publicly and get a public response, it's spam?
People are weird...
What's the point of Twitter, hashtags, etc., if the public doesn't use them to find and comment on things?
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Probably nobody believes me, but to answer the question if replying to tweets was successful, I can say yes.
Its too much of a coincidence that after two and a half month of no sales, all of a sudden I have a symbiostock sale just an hour after tweeting some tweets.
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Ok, this is new to me... Twitter spam? So if you complain publicly and get a public response, it's spam?
People are weird...
What's the point of Twitter, hashtags, etc., if the public doesn't use them to find and comment on things?
let's see the other side, imagine I was an illustrator like you, possibly a good competitor with similar work, your site was down and I took advantage on your own twitter saying that my website is running and could give a discount as well, how would you feel? don't think of Sean's case, talking about you
I understand Sean situation, its iStock yep but its kind of aggressive marketing and I don't think it the best way to get clients, wonder if there is someone here that studied some of these "marketing concepts"
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Treat your contributors fairly and they won't feel the need guerilla tweet you.
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Some of them can't. I answered several questions specifically about where to look elsewhere.
As for direct messaging, again, they asked in the open air of twitter. They didn't send their concerns in a direct message, so I answer in the open air.
Well ok, whatever comforts you. If you believe you haven't behaved unprofessionally and that your sole reason for tweeting the same thing multiple times was "just helping others", there isn't much I can say or do. I can only choose to not believe you, what I actually opted for.
Also the other ones defending you that you are just helping others, like people can't type "microstock agency" in google, I don't know if they're being naive or just justifying your unprofessionalism under the pretext of helping because you're known in this community.
Whatever the case may be, it's yours and their choice, as mine is mine. I might not share the popular opinions around here, but at least I'm not phased by certain figures and am honest about my intentions and attitudes. Case closed for me. :)
You need to look at the totality of the last 12 months. I wonder what you would be saying if you knew and/or were affected by all the butt juice IS dumped on us, and Sean in particular? But I am glad the case is closed for you.
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let's see the other side, imagine I was an illustrator like you, possibly a good competitor with similar work, your site was down and I took advantage on your own twitter saying that my website is running and could give a discount as well, how would you feel? don't think of Sean's case, talking about you...
I'd be fine with it. I'd have no one to blame but myself if I can't keep my website up and running and serving my customers.
In fact, that's part of the reason I shut down my Symbiostock site. I was having trouble keeping it running bug-free. I don't want to run a site that breaks often, is slow, or otherwise doesn't serve customers properly.
I know the twitter tactic can seem aggressive, but it can also be a helpful service to buyers. Clearly a lot of buyers are so hooked into iStock that some don't even know there are other options out there, some that offer many of the same images. Maybe the twitter promotions helped a buyer find the image they needed and kept them from blowing a deadline or possibly losing a client.
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Ok, this is new to me... Twitter spam? So if you complain publicly and get a public response, it's spam?
People are weird...
What's the point of Twitter, hashtags, etc., if the public doesn't use them to find and comment on things?
let's see the other side, imagine I was an illustrator like you, possibly a good competitor with similar work, your site was down and I took advantage on your own twitter saying that my website is running and could give a discount as well, how would you feel?
We're in business. It's not about avoiding hurting your rival's feelings, it's about trying to sell your own work. It's odd to be worried about this when people just flagrantly copy other people's work and nobody gives a dam*. Marketing can't be worse than plagiarism.
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Ok, this is new to me... Twitter spam? So if you complain publicly and get a public response, it's spam?
People are weird...
What's the point of Twitter, hashtags, etc., if the public doesn't use them to find and comment on things?
let's see the other side, imagine I was an illustrator like you, possibly a good competitor with similar work, your site was down and I took advantage on your own twitter saying that my website is running and could give a discount as well, how would you feel?
We're in business. It's not about avoiding hurting your rival's feelings, it's about trying to sell your own work. It's odd to be worried about this when people just flagrantly copy other people's work and nobody gives a dam*. Marketing can't be worse than plagiarism.
there is always something worst that is for sure (we are used to that with agencies) but we were talking about marketing not copying other work, shall we think about world poverty then? I guess we all have our opinion, now back to work!
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Well, to stick strictly to marketing, then: Are you arguing that you shouldn't market in a way that might upset a rival by taking sales away from him?
I doubt if that approach would get an "A" in Marketing 101.
From a business perspective, the only argument against trying to take advantage of iStock's crash by grabbing their customers is the risk that it might backfire by making other potential customers think your business is too aggressive.
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In Ireland its allowed to compare prices, and dish your competitors in ads.
We had a Meteor / Vodafone battle going on for a while. Where both companies were slagging each other off. In one commercial they showed a street with house with Orange doors, indicating that they were all Meteor customers.
In the Vodafone commercial they showed the same street but people were painting their doors Red, indication they switched to Vodafone.
It happens all the time, we all laugh about it, its tongue in cheek.
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let's see the other side, imagine I was an illustrator like you, possibly a good competitor with similar work, your site was down and I took advantage on your own twitter saying that my website is running and could give a discount as well, how would you feel?
It's a business, not a playground.
I think it's completely fair to make use of one company's downtime to promote your own images. We're running a business, so this has nothing to do with hurting other people's feelings, it's about competition. It's aggressive, sure, but every business person with a sense of marketing would make use of situations like this. The buyer needs an image, so as Istocks competitor, you have a choice:
1) don't market your own site (to avoid hurting iStocks feelings), wait for an undetermined amount of time for istock to come up (could be hours), while the buyer needs an image NOW
2) use aggressive marketing to earn some money (the goal of any good business), get a happy buyer, destroy your competitor (in this case, iStock, who, by the way, fully deserves to lose buyers over this)
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Looks like the Valentine's month at IS has finally come to an end !