For now I am video independent and looking at all my options carefully .

If I really want to move out, there is a lot of work to do. I have seen too many people drop the crown out of emotion with no proper planning what to do next.

Before Rebecca came into the forum and when I thought best match was truly broken, not intentionally working against us, I was very excited about E+ on Getty.

That excitement has cooled off considerably because it is obvious they can dial our content up and down, however it suits them.

The pessimistic attitude towards sales and growth speaks volumes of their intentions. I cannot base my life on whatever "secret expectations" they might have.

So yes, I am looking at options, like I suppose are most exclusives. Unfortunatly not everyone is as talented as Sean. I wish I could build something like accordstock.

Jon Oringer at least said in one of his recent interviews that SS currently has 600 000 customers and he estimates that there are another 70 million out there.

Rebecca tells us that the market as ended, new contributors and new files will mean we inevtably lose sales and that there is no future. Also the traffic at gettyimages itself keeps going down. So they have no organic expansion, unless they buy other people�s businesses.

Like others have said "meeting expectations" is not growing.

SS sees a huge world market, Getty doesn�t.

Who do you think will have more growth in the next few years?

Metastocker,

could you please keep your hatred of women to yourself? You are really just making a fool of yourself, as if you�re uncontrolled hormones are in complete overdrive.

Gender has got nothing to do with the quality of a manager. Neither does their religion, their skin color, their age or their body height. Or any other sizes.

Leadership comes from proving yourself and getting results.

Hatred and uncontrolled emotion can never bring results.

It�s not just about understanding how much work goes into image production.

By using the site themselves they become quality controlers for the upload process, ease of use of the lightboxing system, they do test searches with keywords relevant for their files, they get annoyed when they realize how many copycats there are and that showing visible downloads is hurting their sales etc..etc...

Hospitals are run by people who are doctors who work their way up the ladder, IT companies are run by IT people, Biochemical cooperations by Chemists or Biochemists. They might have additional high ranking team members for accouting and legal stuff, but the vision of the company comes from people who truly understand what the company is about. How else will they spot trends and innovate.

Does Getty even have a history of innovating? From what I understand they are just 10 years older then istock, where founded with the money of a billionaire and just keep buying innovative companies. If I look at their Alexa traffic, it is essentially flat (compared to istock).

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasminawad/8261426272/#in/photostream

Obviously their traffic is lower in volume because they are a luxury site. So they are still making a lot of money inspite of the lower volume. But I don�t find it encouraging that the site itself has not been able to attract more customers, or at least more customers who fill their project needs with material from getty. Obviously if the traffic is flat but they doubled their prices, they would have still increased revenue. But somehow I would still expect the site traffic itself to grow if they were expanding aggressively.

They also had to be taken of the stock market and were sold several times, every time increasing their load of debt.

Maybe the news and editorial sector is where they have brilliant, industry leading innovation??

Anyway, I am sure if their team had portfolios, no matter how small, the site would be in a completly different shape.

They should just set istock free.

Give it back to Bruce or find somebody from the community and come to a sensible agreement. They can then have a licensing agreement for the exclusive content and cherry pick whatever they want for their luxury brands that they can micromanage to their hearts content. Getty is the Hermes of the stock industry, they have the upper market locked in very well, where you can go wheeling and dealing for multimillion dollar contracts with large cooperations. Nothing wrong with that business model.

But istock doesn't fit in there.

They need a licensing agreement similar to the one  they have with flickr.

Istock can then go back to growing organically and becoming the marketplace of the industry.

Well. at least that scenario would give us a future. Sort of like Steve Jobs saved Apple when he came back in after John Scully nearly destroyed it. And look were Apple is now, even without him.

I don't see anyone from Getty having the necessary skills and vision to replace Bruce.

They have owned the place for 6 years and still don't get it.

It probably was the thread opened by the customer that made the obvious undeniable.

But again it is sad, that it went this way. It reenforces the impression that they don�t consider us as paying customers. I really loved the post by track5. We have all been there a lot longer than whoever is officially in charge of the site now. And the fact the people in charge didn�t present any kind of social media communication and public leadership skills...I mean why on earth did they buy a crowd sourcing site, if they don�t know how the economics of such a site work??

Until we see results in site stability, RC improvement and genuine interaction, it will be best for exclusives to prepare files for the inevitable. If istock�s earnings keep going down at some point there will be a mass exodus of high quality exclusive content.

If anything, I have learnt I can�t rely on someone else to truly push my business. This is my job and it might be much better to be independent and work with different sites.

Like many I follow the alexa traffic and read whatever info I can get. When SS goes over 300 million in revenue and fotolia breaks 200 million, I guess it will be safe to say that they have enough customer/sales volume to bring appropriate returns.

Most of all I don�t understand why they have people in charge who don�t live and breathe social media or just totally love to interact with the community. If being involved with a crowd sourcing site is not your true passion, then maybe the place should be run by someone who does.

All companies run best if positions are filled by people who completly love what they do. And the community has a lot of talented people they can hire. Bruce used to do it. istock was the talent pool for everything, not just images.

I don�t know if it is too late to save the community, it will take years to rebuild the trust that has been destroyed.

And yes, if they really believe it is just a "communication problem", they don�t get it.

But the community still exists, we will just move on to the next marketplace. Just a click away...

Whow! Those reviews are unbelievably bad. Most of all they confirm the impression we have - that the management lacks vision and personal accountability.

Very frustrating to read that istock apparently saved them for a while and now istock is being brought down as well.

I�ve read reports from other companies in general and there is a much better spread of comments. In the beginning I thought glassdoor would be a place for people venting, but many companies have excellent reviews.

Very interesting website. And a good example how the internet can help to bring transparency.




"�Really enthused to start, but quickly realized the organization can not deliver on projects�
 Former Employee in Seattle, WA � Reviewed Jul 9, 2011

Pros � everybody out the door by 5pm
very low pressure - 0 urgency to get anything done on time
great location and comfortable office
people and personalities are generally agreeable and entirely unremarkable
Cons � Management spends months talking about product roadmaps but not even the simplest projects get done. The site looks and works exactly the same as it did 4-5 years ago"

"Advice to Senior Management � Getty is simply a company in a tailspin that isn't making any material efforts to save themselves. They like to talk roadmaps and handout little books on management de jour, but when it comes time to get accountable, everybody disappears. if it wasn't for the acquisition of istockphoto and allowing that business to run unmolested, Getty would have packed it up awhile ago."

advise to any potential acquirers - PASS or gut that management from Director Level up.
"

Amazing!

Well done, Sean, really impressive.

Here in Germany, the istock office has been closed and on trade shows now getty takes the stand where istock used to be. I also never see ads for istock anymore if I surf the web here, only thinkstock.

It is pretty frightening. Looks like istock is just one of the many "brands", lumped together with jupiterimages, punchstock, thinkstock, photos.com and of course getty.

Fotolia is by far the most active agency in Germany, you run into them everywhere, any event photo or design related. Obviously they also have a local office and even a gallery where they exhibit the work of their exclusive contributors in Berlin. And yet, if you look at the traffic charts, fotolia is a much smaller player than istock (until now). Why can they afford such a massive presence here and not istock?

I sincerly hope that istock still has active trade show presence and advertising in the USA?

Thank you for sharing. Blogs like this are part of the puzzle to try and understand the market.

Would be fascinating if someone else decided to go exclusive to compare what happens.

Even if the portfolios are different, it is still valuable info.

Here is a different idea: what if instead of removing credits, they are going to introduce credits that can be used across all their different sites with one central account for the buyer?

Maybe not that likely if they are scared of customers seeing the same collection on all sites at different prices, but they could be coming up with more harmonized price systems as well.

Just an idea, probably not.

I live in a country with much stricter banking and company laws. What I read about the US is in my opinion a severe political problem that is endangering the whole economy, even ours. But as long as what these vulture capitalist do is legal, it won�t change. I sincerly hope you get MUCH STRICTER laws.

I am no fan of vulture capitalsm, it is not competitevly run business in my opinion. Same for all the poor people that got hooked on huge credits for their homes who obviously and very clearly would not be able to ever pay for that. For me this is fraud. And over here if a bank or organization sells you a credit by overpricing your home or by giving you wrong information they go to jail or are so heavily fined that it severly damages their business (and they stop doing it)

In Germany this kind of system does not exist (on your scale), so our housing market is very stable. But homes also just go up with inflation (not 20% a year) and you won�t get a credit to buy a home unless you have a significant downpayment.

So I sincerly hope your newly elected government takes up the fight with the money mafia.

But apart from that I strongly believe in believe in taking personal responsability. And also I have to accept the fact that many people in other countries work much harder than I do. They also want my quality of life and are very good in business. It means the quality of my life will go down unless I fight very, very hard to stay afloat. We already have this in the stock world were many talented artists live in countries with much lower daily life costs than what I have or they can hire a model for a fraction of what I would be paying. And they can afford assistants. Lots of them. But I still manage to compete. (until now...)

These jobs that are going overseas are also increasing the quality of life for many people there. India and China now have a rising Middle Class. We are beginning to benefit indirectly by selling them our cars and electronics (or stock images)

Even if you somehow removed all vulture capitalists and all corruption from the US economy you will probably still see a downspiraling economy, simply because other countries and people will be more competitive in the world market.

The world is very interconnected and very complicated. There are 9 billion people fighting for resources and income. It will not get easier in the future.

I understand that it would be great to retire peacefully after working hard for 40 years. But I doubt that my generation will see it happen. We will have a much harder old age than our parents. I expect to be working until I fall over, at least part time.

Healthcare is regarded as a human right, but it must be paid for. In Germany I pay taxes of nearly 40%, I also pay additional local taxes, I pay 700 euros a month for healthcare and I still have to pay for many procedures myself because they are not covered. I paid 4500 euros for laser eye surgery because my plan considered it "too experimental" and wouldn�t cover it, although I need good eyes as a photographer. But at least I was able to deduct the cost from my taxes as a work expense.

And even in Germany you can die because some super high quality treatment is not available on your health plan.

But I do get excellent roads, great education and loads of bureaucracy. If you like it, come here

The downside is higher unemployment than in the UK or US, where they pay a lot less benefits, unflexible job market because employers are scared to higher you.

Is it really better to live here? I don�t know. I think the US system is a lot more flexible. If I was younger and my family situation different, I would strongly consider moving there. Or Canada.

But yes, I do hope banking and finance laws change to remove the high risks in the US economy. Unfortunately with the national debt from all those wars and other things, I don�t envy the US administration or you as a voter and tax payer.