That's also typical after a big company goes on an acquisition binge and wakes up with a hangover - they'll start bleeding profitable acquisitions to pump up unprofitable ones.  It's all part of the "synergy".      For example, they tell profitable acquisition 'B' that henceforth, they must buy parts from acquisition 'A', which is not doing too well, in preference to 'B's previously established source.  Suddently 'B' is getting substandard parts, so their quality goes down.   Watch for more hasty and ill-conceived attempts by Getty to rewire the microstock businesses they're acquiring.

I thought this terse little sentence by Kelly in the latest OP was telling:
"As you can imagine, this is taking a heavy toll on the staff at HQ. They're busting their asses getting other stuff done for you, and this has become a huge distraction."
So, why aren't they just dropping it and getting on with the 'other stuff'?

Quote from: batman on May 08, 2009, 13:57

in many or most cases, husbands are right 

Ssshhhh!!!  Don't let that get out!  My husband may get wind of it

sorry ma'am, should have kept my bat gap shut. don't mean to cause a "smug hubbies of stock photographers weekend", not especially during this proximity to Mother's Day!   

speaking of mothers, check this out...
"mmmaaa ma , coo coo  ooh ooh bat man"

hope the photographer don't mind me posting it here.

During one of the Microsoft antitrust trials, a leaked internal Microsoft email summarized their real strategy for dealing with innovations by smaller competitors, which they saw as a threat.  The expression they used - now famous within the industry -  was "embrace, extend, extinguish".

I think the parallels with Getty and microstock are obvious.

If only their intention was to embrace Photos.com/JUI, and then extinguish them.  Their ridiculously cheap subs packages threaten to cut into all of our earnings.

Quote from: stacey_newman on May 08, 2009, 16:21

that's the best question asked yet....just scrap the darn thing, unless they can't

Bingo. This is what I think.

Steady on Stacey __ that's dangerously close to being a worthwhile contribution.

Of course they'd love to drop it. I'm sure they really hate it every bit as much as we do __ probably 10x more in fact. Can you imagine what JJ thinks about this for example? Are we going to see his & other admins entire portfolios on JIU/PC in full support of the concept? I don't bloody think so.

I know istock exclusives hate hearing this, but has anybody considered that Getty does not see "exclusivity" as valuable? As a buyer I sure don't - I think the whole exclusivity thing has come back to bite istock on the bum, so to speak ... sure there are files available on istock that cannot be found elsewhere - but hey, because of the upload limits for non-exclusives there are files available elsewhere that cannot be found on istock ... I remain convinced that exclusivity will soon be amended or dropped altogether on istock because it no longer makes sense as a business strategy.

The other thing is that no contributor knows what istock/Getty is looking at in terms of their market - are downloads up or down? Has revenue peaked? Has revenue dropped? What are they seeing in the market long term? What trends are they identifying? Nobody (i.e. contributors or istock admins) is privy to that information - istock/Getty never ever discuss their long term strategy nor identify the market and business trends they are confronting with their contributors so nobody knows what their business is facing. They always put on happy faces for their suppliers (as well they should) - but the market is changing I can guarantee that - and I don't think contributors are fully aware of this ... the days of expensive images are over - as went the trad agencies, so will go the micros ... micros took away trad business - the subs are lowering the prices even more - barriers to entry in the supplier market are so low now that everybody now thinks they are photographers ... this drives the prices down ... unlike gold and oil etc that are finite, micro suppliers are infinite ... and when you have infinite supply of something, prices go down.

Istock's subs system never took off because it was too expensive - but I fear that subs are the future ... not good news for the contributors but there we go ... the only hope is that some agency comes along and creates a niche in the mid-market - it will not get the bulk of the business but it should be able to do well on the quality rather than high volume - at least in more robust economic times ...

There is an irony here - as long istock remained the designers little secret it could control their own success - the more they became known, and less of a sceret, the more they destroyed the price point for images - our company has multinational clients now "telling us" about microstock - nobody is going to pay high prices for stock photos anymore (unless it is custom work) ... and that has painted the micros into a big corner ...

Averil I am not in any way questioning people's skill levels - there are some fantastic photographers out there doing great work - but for the vast majority of micro stock contributors I would say they began as amateurs with an "eye" perhaps and a digital camera - a lot of them were designers - when micro came along it gave them an outlet for their hobby and over time as contributors their skill levels rose and they became quite accomplished micro stock  - yes, there are also those who began as professional photographers who then either felt compelled by economic necessity to join the micro world or saw an opportunity there - but they are still a small minority - the majority became contributors because istock and then the other micros opened up the opportunity for them ... the majority of contributors have other jobs and use microstock as an avenue for their passion and as an avenue to supplement their income - it's this group that I view as being the source of almost infinite supply ... with some hard work and a little bit of skill almost anybody can contribute - I know cause I make a few hundred a month on microstock myself and I would never ever consider myself especially skilled ... when I say infinite supply I refer largely to people like myself ... I am just not that good but I have learned enough over time that I actually am able to make money on it.

The fact that there are an increasing number of rejections at all sites, and largely for issues such as hard to find purple fringing for example or we have too many similar images, actually shows that supply is outstripping demand IMHO ... if it wasn't, rejections would not be on the rise and they would not be getting stricter on the quality front.

You know what people?

Getty took wrong approach definitely! They are cutting branch they are sitting on.

With so much competition today if they buy sites one by one there will be always new ones which will grow faster than now.

They should not police their relation with contributors due to that contributors (well unfortunately not all) are not working for Getty than for themselves.

When Getty understands the FACT that agency is just one retailer then they can make something with their cuts in this industry.

Authors have power - they create content... So do you hear me Getty sharks?
Also shark-managers from getty are quite not the ones who should manage this kind of business...

We'll see that now Getty buying middle priced micro agencies... They forgot on what is the main problem: Agencies who give away images for lowest prices and cuts to authors! When someone extinguish such agencies there will be some improvement - no other way. So, Getty sharks - Go buy Crestock and Vectorstock. Kill that two and similar industry 'wallmats' and you'll find out that 50% share agency / author is the most fair way to earn money!

Quote from: gostwyck on May 09, 2009, 04:15

we're now four to five years into this game and yet IS is still as big as all the others put together.

But how do we know that? We are not privy to this kind of information ... contributors make assumptions about this all the time but based on what reliable information?

And don't you prove my point when you say you would hate to be starting now given how hard it is? That's because there are so many good shooters out there - exactly right - I submit that the supply of contributing photographers is perhaps greater than the actual demand - that's why the price points are dropping ... otherwise why are the prices going down (and that's what subs are doing - driving the prices way down)? It is not in the best interest of any of the micros to lower prices for no economic reason - prices are dropping because of the competition among sites and the competition is possible because the supply is there ... unless you subscribe to the theory that getty is out to destroy the competition by dropping prices so low it drives out the competitors - well that could be true (though unlikely IMHO) but that only opens the door to newer sites once getty forces everybody else out ... and the cycle begins again ...

Rude truth about why is this happening is just before of this your post!

maybe we could all buy one of these from zazzle 

And there are all the people that think it is an insult to sell their masterpieces for $1 or less.  Some of them even write blog posts about how stupid it is to use microstock sites.  Lots of them will change their minds but it will keep the numbers of pros using microstock down.

Photos.com is just too good a domain name just to extinguish.

No one said that they had to get rid of the domain name.
Ever hear of a redirect? It is quite easy to make it so that when someone types in Photos.com to have it redirect to > iStockphoto.com 

I have wondered if iStock was phasing out exclusivity too, but if they were to do that, as someone said above, it would be an entire rebranding of the iStock image and personally I think that would ruin them. I'm interested to see how HQ responds because I want to know how much pull they still have. that is the biggest test as far as I am concerned.

as for devaluing images, I want to understand this issue as much as possible for future reference. how does the proposed photos.com model compare with the existing sub model offered by SS? am I correct in presuming that the SS model is better than the model outlined for photos.com? (I realize that photos.com using shared iStock content is one of the biggest concerns also)

I mentioned this on an IS forum, but I'll post it here too. When Getty sent the letter to PumpAudio contributors telling them their cut was being reduced to 35% from 50%, they also called some of their contributors. I know because two of my brothers are PumpAudio contributors and they got called. If they are willing to become exclusive, they get to keep their 50% commission - at least for now.

I don't think the exclusive status will go away in the short term - but once there are no/few other viable choices, it may go away or see peremptory rate cuts.

I have asked for clarification from iStock HQ. I`m not trying to be naive, but the perceived sincerity of the reply was seemingly obvious. the reply indicated that iStock is not only NOT in trouble, but doing exceptionally well.

the speculation I am trying to grasp is that microstock is nose diving as a whole. I guess this is an extrapolation based on the outcome should everyone buy into the Getty initiatives...is this correct