It may not stay this way, but as this week has progressed, sales have been returning to the land of the living at IS (for me). Nothing really great (i.e. no big spike over prior good days) but massively better than the prior week (which was grim). Obviously I hope this means that their "tweaks" are moving in the right direction

If you go to a department store the fancy stuff is always in the window. I guess it's like that ?

Not sure that department store is a good analogy - isn't the average age of a department store customer over 65? I can't remember the last time I set foot in a department store except to walk through one if it was at a mall and that was the way from my car to wherever. But even when I did shop in them, they put eye-catching stuff in the window, and that could be seasonal merchandise, sale merchandise or something they hoped might get you to walk in the door instead of walking by.

Department stores don't typically cover the ground from Neiman Marcus to Wal-Mart with Macy's in the middle, which is what IS is more like now, with Agency through the Dollar Bin.

If you look at amazon.com (to cite but one example of this sort of search interface in an online store), when you look at home theatre systems, there are search panels on the left that let you search by brand, by watts, by price (with a list of set ranges and then a from and to text entry field where you specify your price range), rating, etc.. I'm not sure why this successful business model for online shopping is one that Getty/iStock disdain. It seems to be working pretty well for amazon.

This isn't the 1920s where we're trying to appeal to the carriage trade and keep out the riff raff. Have a premium collections landing page (in addition to photos, illos, video, etc.) so that the high end buyers can be directed to start there and never have to see those of us who don't play in that rarefied atmosphere; put a full range of on off switches (and let preferences be saved) so buyers can search as their needs dictate.

I am truly convinced that they can still flog the high price stuff successfully even if they allow buyers to chose not to look at it. It seems like insanity not to let buyers choose and have them take their business elsewhere out of frustration.

The seller was asked about expiration dates, which he said was 2 years from the transfer, but I'd have thought it was 2 years from the purchase date - the original purchase date. Given the seller has been offering these deals for months and one poster claimed he'd gone back for more credits, this can't have been one bulk purchase that was being sold off over time. If that were the case, there'd be less and less time remaining on these credits.

If it isn't some scummy employee taking credits he payed nothing for, I can't see how you can sell for less than half price and make any money on the deal.

I guess as FT has payments to contributors at a fixed rate, not at a percentage of whatever the buyer paid, this is a scam that doesn't directly hurt the people whose images were purchased unless FT voids all the sales.

I don't remember seeing anything quite like this before in the various scams that have come up. I guess the criminal mind is ever inventive

Lisa - from my understanding, that's not how the regional results work. your comment makes a big ( and I believe incorrect) assumption about how the regional sort works. there was a thread in the iStock forum in which the way it will work was described in detail.

I don't recall that - only some vague examples about showing the right nationality if "flag" was used as a search term. Do you have a link to the details?

... First thing copy and paste the full header of the email you received into this web site to find out where the person is located that you sent you the email:

http://www.iptrackeronline.com/header.php

Thanks for posting that link - that's very helpful.

have any of you actually performed test searches? it doesn't sound like it. I've searched on all my test search terms. each search has returned a solid MIX of files.

Yes, I have searched. Many of the terms have a huge disparity in the first one or two pages - masses of Vetta Agency, lots of it with few or zero sales.

Examples:

20 regular files in the first 400 for fish; 20 regular files out of 200 for senior couple; 31 regular of 200 for woman shopping; 12 of 200 for tropical beach; spa treatment 39 of 200; woman eating 21 of 200; woman laptop 30 of 200; man portrait 26 of 200; doctor 37 of 200; swimming pool 13 of 200; summer outdoors 29 of 200; child outdoors 36 of 200; sexy woman 9 of 200.

These aren't a mix, certainly not a solid one. When you consider the small proportion of the 8 million images that are Vetta/Agency, the disproportionate weight becomes overwhelming

if you perform a best match search on any major keyword like 'business', 'family', 'Christmas', 'summer' etc., the best match returns are a mix of images with the first images predominantly from diamonds. also on the first page, early on in the results are plenty of images from black diamonds. so far I have not performed any search that corroborates a theory in which lower canisters seem to be favoured in best match to increase profits.

I haven't done a ton of searches, but I didn't see anything radically upended in the best match results on the few I did, so I'll grant you it weakens any argument that they're trying to push bronze/silver with Vetta/Agency. Another possible explanation is that buyers have taken to heart the suggestion (that I've seen over and over again in the forums from kelvinjay and pink_cotton_candy) to set your results to 200 per page and skip over the first page or two to get past Vetta and Agency. That would also skip over a lot of good sellers that do get mixed in with the premium collections.

When you look at the number of high performers who are seeing really large drops it's hard to see this as ebb and flow.

Perhaps tomorrow we'll all get e-mail saying that they were unfortunately not reporting sales correctly and we've all actually had successive best weeks ever

...it REALLY bothers me to see how they are populating the front page lightboxes....
if contributor confidence and community spirit is still of concern around iStock, one action that would help restore my confidence would be to see an even distribution of contributors represented in these showcase lightboxes.

There's  evidence in many places of rampant favoritism - a small group favoring one another and claiming that it's image superiority that justifies the special treatment. Those who can self inspect even if the rest of exclusives are waiting 10 days; huge Vetta presence when some of the largest are those supposedly impartial "judges". The lightboxes could really be something fun and designer centered, but that's not what's happening.

There's no transparency in the process anywhere - not in our sales data, the criteria for all the special perks (Vetta, Agency, front page lightboxes). There's no appeals process for anything except for Scout - if you don't like it you can leave. It's Vetta because we say it is and we won't discuss it.

In light of all these things, I'm not sure what you could expect from complaining. The last time Lobo berated a group of us for complaining in the Help forum about a problem when we hadn't opened support tickets, I went and opened a bunch of support tickets, one for each problem. They all got closed with a note from customer service that I should use the forums like I'd been told and not open support tickets.

Someone wittier than me said that they could tell everyone to eff off and still be doing a better customer service job than IS. That about sums it up for me. They're taking from 60% to 85% of the gross and throwing themselves a party in London while the site limps along with thumbnails in the wrong color space, no e-mails for CR tickets or acceptances, a pile of search and site functionality bugs, a my_uploads page that would be unusable were it not for Sean's greasemonkey script...etc.

Back on topic, I thought that we might by now have seen the promised guidance on what to shoot (like the Getty Creative Research newsletters) - was that before Christmas that they promised that? I think it's a nice idea to tell us what sort of editorial they see as most needed, but there wasn't a lot of detail and the lightbox didn't seem to reflect the topics that were in demand (i.e. was more about spotlighting things they thought were cool than focusing on the areas they were telling us we would do well to focus on in our editorial submissions).

did anyone report this to any of the stock sites?  I'm thinking of sending it in to compliance enforcement at istock.  I know that they work on squashing this sort of thing - it takes them awhile but they have followed through on issues I had when I found my images used illegally.  i would bet that if the Vetta and Agency files were being stolen they would jump on it pretty quick.

I thought about it, but it didn't mention specific images - I'm not sure that discussing how to commit this theft is something IS can go after. Now if these geniuses would care to post the images they swiped...

Wow, the thought entered my mind about becoming non-exclusive from Istock and then I see stuff like this.

If you have any thoughts at all about doing that, and any notion of contributing to Fotolia, then you need to be quiet about them in public or they will ban you (as they did me, albeit after I left to become an iStock exclusive; they just threatened me with closing my account beforehand).

 I think I was seen as a troublemaker for coordinating efforts to hold off uploading after their initial lowball offer when they started subscriptions (with no opt out).

Some things get deleted - I quoted from a recent FT ad which referenced the occupying force in France during WWII (n*a*z*i*s) and the forum deleted that word.

It doesn't expand IS to iStock, neither does ISP - does anything?

The only think I don't like about the expansion is that it makes learning the shorthand harder (for those of us who type in two or three letter abbreviations, it got learned prior to the forum getting so smart). It certainly does cut down on the "what does xxx mean" questions though.

Normally I could tell you, but I'm not uploading at the moment until they sort out the problems with new content ending up at the back of the best match bus. I don't see anything today in the DeepMeta threads in the Tools/Apps forum - perhaps you want to post there (soon, before Franky goes to bed

So if you look at this thread there is some discussion and a link to thread 253532 and that thread is apparently gonzo.

I can find this thread which says:

"For the remainder of 2010, Vectors will be removed from the Vetta Collection and added back into the Exclusive collection under the Elaborate category (at the same price point). We have a bigger plan in the works for Vectors and will be telling you more about this in the months to come. "

Even using the wayback machine, all I can see is the title of the thread you have a link to. It was the FAQ for the Sept 7th announcements that was sticky for a while. Not sure how long this link will function, but here is what Google had cached for this thread.