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

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?

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

Taking a look at Getty's actions in the last month or so,  plus some of the comments from Shutterstock's February earnings call, I'm wondering if taken together we can make some sense of what Getty's up to.

photos.com and punchstock are going away and their business shifted to Thinkstock and Getty Images; clipart.com has been sold to Vital Imagery Ltd. I'm guessing that what these sites brought in wasn't worth the cost of operating them.

When Getty started Thinkstock in spite of the fact they had two other subscription sites (admittedly inherited from Jupiter Images' acquisition) the thought was that it was their "Shutterstock killer". Given Shutterstock's earnings rise over the last year, I'm guessing that hasn't worked out as they expected.

Someone (tickstock?) suggested that moving subscriptions to iStock and mandating participation meant that Getty was making good money from Thinkstock and wanted to expand it. But if that were the case, I'd have expected them to move more iStock content (and possibly more Getty content - they already changed the Getty contract to let them move things to Thinkstock without the artist's OK) over to Thinkstock where all the buyers expect to find Getty's subscription content.

They can change the iStock contributor agreement to let them force exclusive content onto Thinkstock just as they did earlier with indie content; they've also been working on whatever tangle of code powers their "connector", so I can't imagine it's a technical issue with being unable to move the content over.

So that leads to me to assume that Thinkstock isn't doing as well as all that and they're trying another tack to chip away at Shutterstock's incursion on their turf by putting the subscription business on iStock itself.

I realize that alexa's ranking of a site is just one metric, but looking at iStock, SS, Getty and Thinkstock global/US ranking:

IS  424 / 252
SS  216 / 194
Thinkstock  5,824 / 1,519
Getty 3,003 / 1,107

And for some comparison to see how well Thinkstock is doing against other micros...

Fotolia 528 and Germany (higher ranked than the US) 64
dreamstime 656 / 607
123rf  472 / 551
DepositPhotos 1,317 / 1,060
PhotoDune 2,886 / 2,018
Canstock 3,636 / 2,027
Alamy 16,001 / 12,010

I'm guessing that with all the terrible pricing moves when they remade the collections, business on iStock is not doing so well in spite of all the royalty cuts and that bringing Thinkstock to iStock is  something they hope will reverse that. I would once have said that they'd be missing all the non-iStock content that Thnkstock also has, but given the dump of Getty material onto iStock in the last year or so, a lot of it may already be there. I can't imagine that the aging StockXpert content (that is now nowhere except Thinkstock) is going to make much of a difference to business.

Possibly Carlyle has given Getty some targets to hit and they're doing whatever they can to meet those (in other words looking at the long term for the business has been overshadowed by the short term need to not get fired by their bosses)?

I love the fact that at least SS is reinvesting in their company and looking to the future.

Up to a point, so do I, but Adobe was doing heavy investing, but in things that drew the company (a) away from their bread and butter business with creatives, illustrators and photographers and (b) into toxic business models that seek to boost their profits by doing as little as possible for as much cash as possible:

http://www.businessinsider.com/adobes-acquisition-of-omniture-could-help-define-monetization-analytics-2009-9

http://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2013/06/27/adobe-continues-digital-marketing-spree-with-600-million-neolane-acquisition/

As Adobe's customer for what used to be their core business, none of the above were good news for me.

So I would very much like to understand what SS is planning and whether that is boosting their existing business - the one I contribute to and derive income from - to increase both their profit and my income. Let's hope that's where this is going.

So Thinkstock pricing comes to iStock - and no RC credit for a subs sale

That will make keeping higher royalty rates harder over time for exclusives...

Do you think they want to do something along the lines of Alamy IQ?

http://www.alamy.com/customer/help/alamy-iQ.asp

If SS wants to play in the market that traditionally has been sewn up by Getty, they need to offer the services these large customers are used to. Part of the deal is the free use of comps in return for higher prices for licenses when images are used. My guess is that as the newbie in that market, SS can't barge in and tell companies they have to do business a new way - those who were comfortable changing how they do things would already be SS customers.

Clearly there is a bit less money for the images in the losing designs than if all images had to be purchased; I think if they were creative, SS could come up with some sort of deal where there was a portion of the agencies payments that covered uses of comps and they paid us at subs rates (even if the purchase wasn't strictly a subscription). If SS were more interested in generating contributor goodwill, I'm guessing they could easily afford to do this out of their own pockets, but I think they feel their top of the table monthly earnings status means they don't need to do that.

Giving away use of the comps is a little extra SS can use to sweeten a deal - it's effectively a giveaway that doesn't cost them a penny because they're not obliged to compensate us. Sort of like all those offers to give us "exposure" in return for a free use As I mentioned a few dozen posts back, I'm not thrilled but I can live with it because I like the SOD income.

But they say: "ELs are not part of PP!!!"

That's rubbish. I have an EL from October 2013 - or at least a payment that exactly matches up with the amount shown for "Thinkstock Extended License Image Pack 25" in this chart on iStock:

http://www.istockphoto.com/help/sell-stock/rate-schedule

They have a "contact us" note on their web site - and I'd have sworn at one point they showed the prices for these extended license image packs on Thinkstock, but I don't have any screenshots to back that up.

It looks very much like the setup at stock.xchng (http://www.sxc.hu/)

I did some searches , including one for San Antonio and I think this shows their problem clearly:

http://www.freestock.com/search/free-san-antonio-stock-photos.html

Not one of the free images is actually of San Antonio (I assume because there aren't any). They're not even very good pictures of the Golden Gate bridge Mine are there, but they're sponsored and go straight to Shutterstock.

You're a gem

I don't know how many of you use TripAdvisor, but it seems like we want a type of TripAdvisor site for stock agencies (and possibly other businesses too). That isn't as easy as one might like - fighting off fake entries for example - but it's a great way for people to see what hotels/restaurants stock agencies/services are like.

You can sort things by date so that old/bad behavior can be over time ameliorated by improvements, but history is never erased (unlike the BBB and Angie's List)