No you aren't missing anything here.  My opinion is that thinkstock was costing too much when you look at cost benefit ratios, so they decided to redirect that effort into thinkstock, and possibly bundle a subs and a od model for sale. They are in such debt that something has got to give. I think the dissolve of thinkstock is a first major step towards some big news.

Isnt the general thought that Getty was pushing customers from IS to TS? Why would they kill off TS now? Change of heart?

So Getty is now going to call all their customers they called to move to TS again, and tell them, hey TS isnt making us enough money, can you please move back to buying from IS where we made images cheaper?

Quote from: Ron on May 21, 2014, 07:14

Why would they kill off TS now?

Getty created Thinkstock to compete with Shutterstock on subscriptions but Thinkstock failed to do it.
Now Getty brought subscriptions to iStock and made it even cheaper then Thinkstock.
I think they will close Thinkstock very soon to concentrate everything in one place.

I earn in getty family 15% IS and 85% TH.

Thinkstock was a pitbul created to compete to SS but ... was IS who drop...

So Getty is now going to call all their customers they called to move to TS again, and tell them, hey TS isnt making us enough money, can you please move back to buying from IS where we made images cheaper?

Why would they do this?

http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=359606&page=1

Quote from: Mantis on May 21, 2014, 08:54

Quote from: Ron on May 21, 2014, 07:28

So Getty is now going to call all their customers they called to move to TS again, and tell them, hey TS isnt making us enough money, can you please move back to buying from IS where we made images cheaper?

Why would they do this?

http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=359606&page=1

I dont see how that answers my questions. I know about subs on IS, but why would Getty move buyers from IS to TS and back to IS again? All they achieve with that is that buyers move away from Getty altogether.

SS is still running BS. Its the same as IS and TS next to each other.

Cost. Of course we don't know for sure but we also don't know what the deep debt is forcing them to do and what cost cutting measures they are implementing. It does cost to run redundant sites. Bigstock already existed, thinkstock didn't.

No, I wondered if that's to push people onto iS subs, but this is what I'm seeing on TS's UK site:

maybe you should know one thing:
www.fotomore.com  this is a chinese stock, and it was from is. the price is 16500 CNY for one-year sub which allow to download 9000 pictures in all.
and it limited 750 per month.
so it is 1.8333 CNY per picture. it means 30 cent dollar per picture.

I looked there and found some of my images. Seems to be an 'official' site, but I don't know for sure.
I couldn't at first glance find a way to sign up there without understanding Chinese. Maybe it is a 'new market'? (Or maybe I'm just unobservant or not persistent enough.)

I also think we are seeing Getty create an "all in one" product so it makes selling it more attractive.

A while ago (last year? year before?) on one of the iS buyer surveys, they specifically asked if buyers would like to see all the Getty-family offerings together on one site, so clearly they've been thinking about it for a while.
It would be good for buyers, but no doubt they'd find a way of making it even worse for contributors. Although e.g. making a 20% flat rate payment would be better for iS indies, it would be worse for exclusives.
I had some ideas about what they might do, but as always, they completely side-swiped me by putting all non-Vettas into Subs. 

maybe you should know one thing:
www.fotomore.com  this is a chinese stock, and it was from is. the price is 16500 CNY for one-year sub which allow to download 9000 pictures in all.
and it limited 750 per month.
so it is 1.8333 CNY per picture. it means 30 cent dollar per picture.

of which, if the file originated in iStock, indies get 15% flat and exclusives get 20% flat.