MicrostockGroup
Agency Based Discussion => iStockPhoto.com => Topic started by: Ron on October 09, 2013, 16:31
-
Well, I can only imagine removing the member profile features is going to piss some people off. Can you imagine having a blog on iDot for years and now its gone. Site performance is good, but having to sacrifice parts of the site for it is questionable.
We are making every effort to improve site performance. The faster the site, the better the experience for people using it – contributors and customers. Of course that means we need to take a hard look at a number of features we currently have on the site, the impact that they have on site performance and the ongoing utility of those features. We should note that nothing is off the table. We are identifying a number of solutions to improve the performance issues but in order to deal with the larger issues we need to first start untangling Contributor and Client features from one another.
My Uploads:
When a contributor uploads a file, it will no longer appear instantly on their My Uploads page. Instead there will be an approximate 5 minute delay. We appreciate this might alter your workflow when uploading your content. However, this is a change that will give us back some site performance. Expect to see this change in the next couple of weeks.
Member Profile Changes
:
In a continued effort to accommodate some larger code changes on the site we have found it necessary to make some alterations to the Member Profile pages. We are planning to remove the following features as soon as possible:
• Testimonials
• User Blog
• About Me
We can appreciate that there will be some concern about the removal of these features. We would like to make it clear that our chief concern at this point is to improve site performance, making it easier and faster for customers to license content from iStock.
We want to assure you the Lightbox banners you have created can still be utilized in the description field on the File Close Up page. What we have found is that he majority of our contributor who are utilizing the Blog and About me sections are using them specifically for hosting their many Lightbox banners. We are strongly suggesting you find an alternative place to host these images going forward. These features will be removed in the immediate future.
Legacy Features:
We are also removing a number of legacy features that have been either discontinued or offered elsewhere offsite:
• Ratings and Comment
• Logos (Previously Announced April 23, 2012 - we are removing the last remnants)
• Contributor FAQ (New FAQ is available here)
We have a discussion thread prepared for your questions or concerns.
This notification thread will serve as a place where we will update our progress. Please subscribe to this thread in the event you want to be provided email notifcations.
The links
http://istockfaq.gettyimages.com/ (http://istockfaq.gettyimages.com/)
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=356766&page=1&sp_rid=&sp_mid=5781399 (http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=356766&page=1&sp_rid=&sp_mid=5781399)
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=356746&page=1&sp_rid=&sp_mid=5781399 (http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=356746&page=1&sp_rid=&sp_mid=5781399)
-
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=356766&messageid=6946272 (http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=356766&messageid=6946272)
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=356766&messageid=6946276 (http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=356766&messageid=6946276)
-
Laughable, but apparently worth a woo yay there. Desperation.
-
Why can't they even improve a site's speed without having to remove profile pages and blogs? What does a member's profile page have to do with overall site speed (specifically regarding search results)?
I have added contact information on my blog for those clients who would want to seek contact with me. They should at least allow us to show a small biography or something.
The 5 minute delay after uploading is bothersome and could greatly disrupt uploading workflow.
The only thing that sounds good is the removal of the completely obsolete and irrelevant rating and comment system. Same thing goes for the Logos section, which was an epic failure to begin with.
-
I see that the search doesn't work for public lightboxes. I wonder if they are going to do away with that also.
-
Laughable, but apparently worth a woo yay there. Desperation.
Woo yay! It must be desperation. I know nothing about coding but I can't imagine that removing those features will make a significant difference to searches ... which is surely where the speed is needed?
Slowly, slowly Istock management are actually accepting that these issues exist which is surely the first step to resolving them. Maybe one day they'll finally face up to the fact that their royalty rates, the stingiest in the industry, are actually holding them back ... but by then it will almost certainly be too late.
Personally I am very comfortable with the 'delay after uploading' ... because I won't be uploading to them ever again ... unless and until they significantly improve royalty rates. I'm just doing my bit to improve their site speed.
-
At least it's nice to see them do something... but at the same time it's hard not to see it as an act of desperation. Like they're completely lost and don't know how to fix the site so they're trying a little bit of everything. The Fresh Match was pretty much the same... it's like they've given up the idea of ever being able to fix the the broken Best Match, so they launch this compromise instead.
I'm getting more and more desperate since I'm exclusive...
-
They're going to implement all of these changes and the site will be even slower and buggers than it is presently.
-
I swear they are just looking at the features at ShutterStock and saying, if they don't have them we don't need them either. Probably very true but the 5 min upload delay is just a pain and not a feature at SS. IStock can now say "we offer a five minute delay on uploads to give you time to pick your nose and prepare keywords, no other site dose this for you in the industry!" Just kidding of course but I truly hope real progress is made from this.
-
I swear they are just looking at the features at ShutterStock and saying, if they don't have them we don't need them either. Probably very true but the 5 min upload delay is just a pain and not a feature at SS. IStock can now say "we offer a five minute delay on uploads to give you time to pick your nose and prepare keywords, no other site dose this for you in the industry!" Just kidding of course but I truly hope real progress is made from this.
But they're not saying there will be a five minute delay between every upload? Just that it will not show up on the My Upload page immediately.
-
Of course and not a a big deal it's just silly.
-
Yeah, I don't get it either... :P
-
Can anyone who 'knows about these things' say whether removing one or other of the duplicated feature on the upload page, whereby both clicking on the file number under the tiny thum or clicking the Edit text/button both take you to the file editing page, would signicantly reduce overhead on that upload page?
I remember when it was introduced some people saying it was adding to the time the pages took to load, and IIRC TPTB didn't refute it, or offer a reason why both are there.
-
I think it's the image thumb nails that are slowing iStock down. A buyer should be able to purchase from the images description.
-
Ditch the RC system and iStock will scream!
-
I really seriously doubt that the features on the profile page are what's been slowing down the site. What they are is a way for contributors to try and differentiate themselves, and establish a brand and/or relationship with the buyer base.
The removal of these features is yet another calculated and deliberate step toward taking the contributors out of the equation and making it appear to buyers that stock photos are a random commodity, disassociated with any actual artist or creator.
-
I really seriously doubt that the features on the profile page are what's been slowing down the site. What they are is a way for contributors to try and differentiate themselves, and establish a brand and/or relationship with the buyer base.
The removal of these features is yet another calculated and deliberate step toward taking the contributors out of the equation and making it appear to buyers that stock photos are a random commodity, disassociated with any actual artist or creator.
Great points Lisa. I think you're right too. It is following the same pattern where artists aren't even acknowledged on places like Thinkstock. We , the content providers, don't matter to Getty at 'Midstock' level.
-
It is following the same pattern where artists aren't even acknowledged on places like Thinkstock. We , the content providers, don't matter to Getty at 'Midstock' level.
Yep. It's pretty obvious that we are nothing more to Getty than a debit on their balance sheet. :(
-
.
-
Lobo just confirmed that the "Friends Feature" will be gone in the future too.
-
If the change can improve the site performance, I don't have any problems with removing these features.
-
Lobo just confirmed that the "Friends Feature" will be gone in the future too.
What about contributor's names being credited to the files that they created? Surely that's got to go too in the great drive for site speed?
What utter nonsense! I'd suggest this is actually a backward step for IS in that it pretty much proves that IS mgt are making knee-jerk decisions, in the faint and pathetic hope, that anything might just make a difference.
I am just so relieved that I am not exclusive to Istock. Women and children to the upper deck please. The call to abandon ship cannot be too far away.
-
The similars feature isn't coming back.
The best Woo-way we've had in ages, even though it's a negative!
-
Now forums are going to be moved off site and become private, about time!
-
Positive - istock at least publicly admit they have a problem (site speed) ...
Positive - istock attempt to address the problem
Neutral - at first glance, none of the removed features seems to be terrible for contributors (at least for myself, but maybe I overlooked something?)
Negative - do we really believe that this is the best way to target site problems? For me (as an ex-IT person) - well - doubtful...
Negative - a certain "contributor relations manager" states ....' As noted in the OP, untangling the code is our goal. Site speed improvements will come as soon as we start taking steps to rectify the problems on the back end' Very worrying is the implication that iStock has little insight to the working of its own computer system (despite the alleged root-and-branch workover of a couple of years ago, which seemed to do little except to pad many of the pages with redundant graphics).
Overall though, I would have to say that acknowledging/addressing this problem, has to be a good thing...
Regards
-
Very worrying is the implication that iStock has little insight to the working of its own computer system
I think anyone who's been following what's been happening with their site already knew this to be fact. I've been involved in taking over projects where the original developers are long gone and no one understands the full picture. It isn't pretty, and never ends well.
-
Private forums? So buyers will have no interaction with contributors? Nice.
With all these people so happy since they don't use those features, it's amazing those features affected anything. Lol...
-
Simply applying common sense, why would site features on user profiles, which have been there nearly since site inception, slow it down now to begin with? They didn't slow it down before years ago when they were introduced. So why not suspect that the slowness of the site is coming from all the NEW features added in the last 2 years and not the old ones?
If you keep using band aids to try and patch potholes it's never going to hold. And they keep building on that old content management platform which was never designed for all the stuff they have added to it in recent years. It needs a full rebuild from the ground up. Removing a few low resource consuming features isn't going to fix anything. How much bandwidth could those static content profile pages be doing to eat up site resources anyway? Not very much I'm sure. The major tug on the site's foundation is probably its massive picture data base. File searches I'm sure is a much greater strain. I imagine profiles are accessed on such a small volume as compared to the file search engine returning search results from millions of files.
This is definitely another case of typical iStock window dressing as an excuse to take away more contributor features that give the site any sense of community.
I bet whoever came up with the story to feed to the contributors that they needed to remove these features to speed up the site got some Woo-Yays back at HQ. but does anybody ever believe any of the misdirection they try and feed us? Doesn't seem like it. Sheesh!
-
iStock paradox... website has a problem coping with steadily decreasing volume of traffic. :P
-
iStock paradox... website has a problem coping with steadily decreasing volume of traffic. :P
Classic!
-
Why does anyone believe a word they say? I never believed the obvious lies when they tried to justify cutting the lowest commission percentages in the industry. Now, I don't believe that stripping istock of the few things that made it look different to other assimilated Getty sites has anything to do with the site speed.
Doesn't it seem strange that most of the other sites have spent money on newly coded version of the site while istock has ground almost to a halt? It seems obvious that they don't want to waste any money on istock. Taking most of our sales money isn't enough for them. I think this is just part of the redesign to make istock look as much like the Getty site as possible.
-
Bruce said this in an interview about the site technology. It was a long time coming before Idot did something about it with a completely backwards decision.
Q: Someone said if Bruce was controlling iStock now, iStock surely will be different from what it is today. Do you agree? Can I have your comments on today’s iStockPhoto?
B: If I were controlling iStockphoto, I would be investing in a long term strategy, not managing the budget by the quarter. I would firstly work on the underlying technology as it's old and outdated. It was never designed to be as big as it has become. The "best match" needs a lot of work, or could be removed entirely. The most important thing I would be doing is giving a larger share of the royalties to photographers. They should be fairly paid.
http://www.tukusheying.com/info/es_t_20130506102659.html (http://www.tukusheying.com/info/es_t_20130506102659.html)
-
The big fat overweight zeppelin is going down so they've chucked out some of the baggage without any discernible improvement as far as I can see. Passengers and crew will be next.
-
The site performance needs more than a tweak...it needs a twerk.
-
Private forums? So buyers will have no interaction with contributors? Nice.
More likely to keep outsiders from getting wind of how things are going - from the monthly reports, for example, or discussions of the various strange pricing policies etc. Those can't instil confidence in anybody, from the investors to the buyers.
I've a feeling that Getty doesn't like the idea of "online communities". A bit too commie, perhaps. In fact, I've had a sneaking suspicion for a long time that there are old-timers at Getty who have at least a subconcious desire to destroy iStock because of what it did to their industry.
There's been a load of stuff, going right back to the "why buy here when you can get it cheaper at TS" to the decision first to hike prices too high, then to cut half of them until they're too low to force contributors away, to flooding the site with snapshots, to destroying the forums, to handing away images on Google [apparently, "c hu ck i ng" - is rude and activates the site's auto-censor] , to flooding the site with unwanted Getty stuff, to dumping the canister payment structure in favour of "credits" and reneging on the "grandfathering" promise just as they were about to get a heap more independents turn exclusive ... all of which only seem to make sense if the people calling the shots despise the company they are making the decisions for.
Sacking you was another pointless way to grab bad publicity, come to that.
Of course, I might be wrong, maybe they are just incredibly stupid and lacking in talent and understanding of what they are doing.
-
I hope I can help out with the site performance. I just asked for my account to be deleted. (After having deactivated my images there a few years ago already).
-
Moving the forums to a new place to improve speed might be useful. Making the forums private will in the public eye in effect remove their online community.
Internet companies these days try very hard to attract and build online communities and this can be a great asset on their valuation. Looks like Getty is not interested in that.
It will be interesting to see if other companies pick up on that and invest in a publicly visibly community. Not just to attract more people to a site with a publicly visible friendly spirit but also to increase their "online pull" and company value for being able to successfully host and attract a large online community.
-
I have added contact information on my blog for those clients who would want to seek contact with me.
Bingo. I would place a large bet that this has more to do with the reasoning than does site speed. They don't want people clicking out of iStockphoto, and they especially don't want people clicking over to your site, where you might offer to sell directly to the customer for a better price.
-
.
-
I bet that very soon they will remove contributors too…
-
Lobo just confirmed that the "Friends Feature" will be gone in the future too.
I used the think the old name "creative network" made more sense than "friends" anyway. But if they are removing this feature, then Istock will effectively be the only major microstock agency that doesn't have any on site way for BUYERS to follow artists whose work they are interested in.
The removal of the other features mostly affects just contributors, but the loss of ability for customers to easily follow their favorite artists will surely be inconvenient for them.
-
.
-
The real story behind the techno babble about code, accommodating, alterations and whatnot is the fact the old geezer in the basement who used to whack the servers with a spanner has snuffed it.
-
I bet that very soon they will remove contributors too…
Hmmm ... as of tonight, I still have my account there ... they could really start with the ones that WANT to leave. ;)
-
They said they were removing those things because: "In a continued effort to accommodate some larger code changes on the site we have found it necessary to make some alterations to the Member Profile pages." Maybe they are adding a follow artist button for buyers. If buyers actually do follow artists then they'll probably have something to accommodate them.
Well, if they said they were doing it for site functionality, that settles it then.
As for speculating about a "follow artist" button, or anything else that would be beneficial to either customers or contributors, I expect the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny are working on that right now. ;D
-
.
-
Forums have been down for at least ten minutes, is it an experiment, or just a random blip? (No error message, just a big white page under 'Forums'.)
Also, I can't get onto my home page. The timer just keeps going round and round.
Added: Forums and home page back up.
-
Forum's working for me, Sue. The site doesn't seem any faster - Dreamstime, on the other hand, is working like a flash since iStock deleted the blog entries. Strange but true.
-
Forum's working for me, Sue.
And has been for nearly an hour (see above!)
-
Forums not working for me.
-
Forums not working for me.
same goes for profile here
-
Forums now showing a Gateway Timeout Error.
At least the white page earlier still had the search box above, but to be fair, I guess not many buyers browse the forums then go to search.
Search is working form the home page.
Added: now forums is again a white page with the search bar at the top.
-
it gotta be the slowest site on all earth, just unbelievable and very annoying!
-
I hope I can help out with the site performance. I just asked for my account to be deleted. (After having deactivated my images there a few years ago already).
Yeah, so I finally decided too, I didnt upload anything like for a year, 0 sales on my very small port there, so there is no reason to continue on this wrecking ship :D
I deactivated all images (thanks SL for the greasemonkey script, saved me today like 2 hours at lest) and I requested to close my account.
Time to scale up my photo skills and move to stocksy or offset haha :D
-
Yeah, no improvements in speed yet... I'm getting gateway timeout a lot this morning. I wonder how many customers they've lost to other sites the past year... :( Will they ever get their site back on track or will they be in the "low earner" section of this forum in a year or so? It's nail biting times for us exclusives right now. :-\
-
Its an absolute mess. Its slower then ever before. The World Wide Web wasnt even that slow back in 1993.
-
Gateway Timeout
The proxy server did not receive a timely response from the upstream server.
Reference #1.94487b5c.1381503047.5acf1eb
-
That's odd. ::) At least two comments about site problems today, which were true, have 'disappeared' from their forums.
Hope the commentor didn't get banned.
-
They probably have to remove negative posts about the site, as they are causing the slowdown :)
-
Forum's working for me, Sue. The site doesn't seem any faster - Dreamstime, on the other hand, is working like a flash since iStock deleted the blog entries. Strange but true.
ROFL! Then it was worth it after all :D
-
.
-
Forum's working for me, Sue. The site doesn't seem any faster - Dreamstime, on the other hand, is working like a flash since iStock deleted the blog entries. Strange but true.
ROFL! Then it was worth it after all :D
Istock didn't delete the blog entries yet, I think the two are unrelated.
Another helpful post from Captain Obvious. ::)
-
.
-
The World Wide Web wasnt even that slow back in 1993.
Funny line, but of course not true for the majority of web users back then. It took forever just to dial out and connect .... Ugh; not fond memories.
-
@ Lisa
Captain Obvious ;D ;D ;D ;D
-
Noticed last night that the search looked different, but thought I'd forgotten how the last change looked.
Anyway, now it doesn't 'hold' your display preferences (at the beginning of the week it wasn't holding if you wanted to see photos only, haven't checked that yet). The thums look to me to be smaller (subjectively, I didn't measure the last layout!) and 'only from iStock' has gone completely. So now there is no indication on the search thums, loupe view or file page that an image is exclusive. Well, I've thought for a while they wanted rid of exclusives and this might be one more clue.
OTOH, recently 'only at iStock' (quite apart from those images for which it was untrue) suggested 'more expensive', even for exclusive files demoted to Main.
Wonder whose turn it was to 'suggest something' yesterday?
Not necessarily saying the changes are bad, just that for a long time now, they seem to be trying out random changes without any evidence of a joined-up strategy.
-
Forum's working for me, Sue. The site doesn't seem any faster - Dreamstime, on the other hand, is working like a flash since iStock deleted the blog entries. Strange but true.
ROFL! Then it was worth it after all :D
Istock didn't delete the blog entries yet, I think the two are unrelated.
Another helpful post from Captain Obvious. ::)
I only posted because I went to Istock to see what they had done now that "iStock deleted the blog entries", but they hadn't deleted them. It wasn't obvious to me that he was lying about that part because it's going to happen sometime, just not yet.
Actually, they had deleted them but then they put them back (and I wasn't "lying" about the DT part, either, though I'm willing to admit that it might just have been a coincidence).
-
.
-
Noticed last night that the search looked different, but thought I'd forgotten how the last change looked.
Anyway, now it doesn't 'hold' your display preferences (at the beginning of the week it wasn't holding if you wanted to see photos only, haven't checked that yet). The thums look to me to be smaller (subjectively, I didn't measure the last layout!) and 'only from iStock' has gone completely. So now there is no indication on the search thums, loupe view or file page that an image is exclusive. Well, I've thought for a while they wanted rid of exclusives and this might be one more clue.
OTOH, recently 'only at iStock' (quite apart from those images for which it was untrue) suggested 'more expensive', even for exclusive files demoted to Main.
Wonder whose turn it was to 'suggest something' yesterday?
Not necessarily saying the changes are bad, just that for a long time now, they seem to be trying out random changes without any evidence of a joined-up strategy.
It does say only from istock on the loupe view.
Sorry, you are totally correct. I was only looking in the white area. :-[
-
Why did they introduce the similar images feature and then two weeks later it has been removed? It's like the goal posts are always moving with no consultation or even an announcement.
-
I know you probably discussed this elsewhere. Why did they introduce the similar images feature and then two weeks later it has been removed? It's like the goal posts are always moving with no consultation or even an announcement. I was doing better with the similars feature but now I'm back to normal.
It was extremely unpopular with content suppliers as it appeared before their own linked lightboxes. Also, many of the files weren't very 'similar', often bizarrely unlike.
However, the actual reason it was removed was that it slowed down the site even more than normal.
It currently appears in the loupe view, totally gazumping the contributor's linked images / banner. The image shown are still subject to random reordering by buyers (and 'viewers' (?) ) of the importance of keywords, so not always very 'similar'.
-
The good news is that all the changes have resulted in a much faster site.
Not.
-
The good news is that all the changes have resulted in a much faster site.
Not.
I thought it was faster. Its not as slow as it used to be
-
On second thought, if the site gets any slower, I am going to switch to pigeon.
Its been loading for a minute now to get to my earnings, but nothing is happening.
I cant wait to close my account. Forget submitting to TS. Its a dead horse.
-
The site has stopped altogether at least with regard to the forums - nothing comes up but an empty page. I can view photos in best match etc but I can't view my own stuff. Also I was trying to upload some photos and the deep meta was crawling so I had to stop. I can't check if they uploaded or not.There is something not right over there!
-
tick tock, tick tock here comes tickstock
-
.
-
Everything is broken, probably time for you all to close up shop and move on.
Been there. Done that.
-
.
-
It was not workng for a short while. It is working for me now.
-
For me it's been on and off for on the contributor side for (now) 17.5 hrs, i.e. since I got up.
The search function seems to be as it was.
-
Anyone notice the similarities between the performance of the IS site and the Obamacare web site? Must be sharing the same IT techs. We seem to be getting equally screwed no matter which site we pick. :'(
-
It certainly is eye-opening when you see how old many of the unsolved bugs in the new November bugs thread are.
-
Anyone notice the similarities between the performance of the IS site and the Obamacare web site? Must be sharing the same IT techs. We seem to be getting equally screwed no matter which site we pick. :'(
Yep. I said the same thing here :)
http://www.microstockgroup.com/istockphoto-com/stats-graphics-not-updating/msg351997/#msg351997 (http://www.microstockgroup.com/istockphoto-com/stats-graphics-not-updating/msg351997/#msg351997)
-
Everything is broken, probably time for you all to close up shop and move on.
Been there. Done that.
Right behind you