Nice feather in your cap - congrats! Use it in your blog, website or whatever... interesting to see what can be done with your images in production work.

Rebecca Rockafellar is a manager, nothing more, nothing less. I suspect the next big announcement will be the repair of the zoom feature to the website. It's her goal to come out on the top end of this, to give the appearance of "making progress" while ignoring the real issues that have been raised. Also if the real issues were raised, I suspect it might entail a civil action against them. Best to keep that quiet.

The problem is two different business models - Getty Images - created by a group of ex bankers. None of these people are creatives and it's their goal to present their 20% royalty rate as a "industry standard". In reality, the best possible position for you as a contributor is to die. That way Getty Images would purchase your portfolio from your family and then make 100% royalty earnings from it. The Getty Images plan was to purchase as many image sites as possible in an effort to control the market. Same as grandpa Getty did with the oil market. (And he wasn't a very nice man either) Problem is, microstock sites popped up all over and with better quality and price. Hence the plan to buy the largest, istockphoto.

And istock? It is now leaderless, and in full control by Getty Images, since 2009-2010. Nothing can happen without approval from HQ in Seattle. The best match search is also being controlled there, which is why it appears "broken" since it is in Getty's best interest to promote it's own images on istock and make us all secondary. Based on these two conflicting business models you have two options:
1: Getty Images announces it's time to fairly reward photographers and artists and raises its royalty rates.
2: Setting up istock to slowly being pushed towards their 20% "standard royalty" (remember what istock did when it first announced Vetta for illustrators? That's your first clue)

I still stand by my prediction that the istock forum will be either shut down or turned into an "information only" resource in the future. They'll spin it as "too much negative and we need to move forward." It's better to keep contributors in the dark, rather than open discussion of ideas. Crowdsourcing goes both ways, and it's hard for a corporation to control it when it turns against you.

That's sad to hear, he seemed to be one of the good ones. I'm disappointed that this news is buried in an odd istock post. He's a writer, he didn't have a final post in his own words, or a professional statement from IstockHQ? This is reminding me more and more of a Stalin photograph. A little airbrushing, and now your a nonperson... move along folks, nothing to see here, shoot, upload, repeat....

lisafx , jsnover , ShadySue - thanks for the feedback, I'll try to post more cartoons in the future. (I seem to be getting new material from istock with each month)

Regarding the site updates, I can think of only two situations:
One: the IT team at istock HQ doesn't have the skills to do website updates properly so we are just dealing with people who have the best intentions but just can't cut the mustard and no ability to plan whatsoever.
Two: Instructions are from Getty HQ to not work weekends or during off times and to do this during the work week. Sure sales will slump, but in the long run perhaps that is what they want to push us all to a 20% royalty rate. A setback here, a slump there, and soon we'll all be down a canister rate with lower RC earnings.

Is does makes sense. When I read my agreement with them it clearly said you can sell from other RF sites but not from your own. How can he do it? I admire him for doing it I just want to know how it is possible.

It's easy. Peopleimages.com is a separate company that has "contracted" Yuri to submit and sell his work. As an istock contributor, you can do it too. First, create and incorporate a business. Call it "Acme Images, Inc." for example. Next, Acme Images will purchase your images on a work for hire basis for lets say, one dollar. Acme Images will then own and sell your images on it's website. Now you're still an exclusive istock contributor who also does freelance work on the side. In this case, Acme Images is purchasing your images outright to sell on it's website. As a shareholder in the independent company you will also be taking a share of those profits.

Quote from: lisafx on May 01, 2012, 17:05

Anyone planning to buy shares?

I would not buy shares in any creative corp or service, waste of time. I once bought shares in one of the worlds most prominent AD-agencies, sold them six months later,  waste of time. When depression hits the globe, the"creative-world",  is the first one to bite the dust.

I would look into buying shares. It certainly is a company on the rise and may lead to a future buyout. Also as a shareholder you will be have access to the annual reports which would be interesting to look at. What would be the costs be in running this kind of business? It's interesting to hear people complain of gas prices or bank fees yet do not buy shares in any of these related companies when they make record profits. As to buying shares of a creative company, Warren Buffett made some good coin buying a few advertising agencies back in the day. Holding a stock for six months is too short a time to gain any value. Sorry to hear you got burned but don't close the door on it.

Would Getty buy into this? Maybe. But I get the image of a very fat man in a restaurant with the waiter saying "Sorry sir, but your credit has been declined..."

Quote from: cclapper on January 20, 2012, 15:44

So I browsed the thread on the istock forum and see that Lobo is answering questions in typical Lobo-like fashion. So I presume he isn't one of the ones who got laid off? Does anyone know? I haven't been through all the threads yet today. Just curious. If he's staying, I guess that means the company thinks he is a doing a bang-up job.

...or he just missed this round of cuts. Complete assimilation hasn't yet occurred...

Agreed. When Getty shuts down the istock forums he'll be out of a job. Not nice to have contributors complain about poor monthly sales all the time. Better to keep people in the dark and not discuss opinions or ideas.

Interesting news, at least they waited until after Christmas for staff cuts. I wonder if Istock HQ will eventually shut down in Calgary and move to Seattle much like Veer did (within 2-4 years). If Getty is going to control istock it might as well go all the way. I still think the F5 website change was the result of Getty being hands on for coding so it could upload most of it's own content. That's why you're getting so many bugs, its hard to fix things when you have corporate HQ in Seattle adjusting/tweaking things as well. Add to that istock's programmers trying to keep up and you'll have problems. And we still haven't heard from Rebecca Rockefeller what's planned for 2012. I think they are trying to fix all of the website bugs so she can give us all a "good news" announcement. Wait and see...

I don't know if anybody else noticed but Pastor Scott's questions on the istock ASA thread keep getting deleted. He's tried twice and twice I see them disappear. Does corporate not want to answer questions anymore? I have his questions here:

From Pastor Scott:
Post:So I've read, waited, re-read and have my questions. Thanks for any forthright answers. I realize these are mutli phrased questions so just do what you can. Kind regards.
 
Q. We were consulted before this ASA?
 It was mentioned early on that this ASA policy was crafted after consulting with many of us? (�After consulting with contributor representatives globally.) We knew who the fruad clawback conference call people were, and the illustration call, can we also be told who contributed to this? Who among these global ones suggested this �alley-way� as a positive? Were the persons who were consulted chosen at random or hand picked? Since much of the new ASA centers on adding content to the PP�s, were the �representatives� of both sides of the issue of the PP consulted or just those who participate in the PP? In other words, how objective were the suggestions, the consulting that were/was acted upon? Also is it current iS policy to preface an administrative action by a consult of its contributors? The survey�s timing seemed oddly close. Did the timing of the survey have anything to do with the ASA? Was it what the �consulting� referred to or deemed to serve a psychological purpose before a major change or just an coincidence of sorts?
 
Q. Is the ASA a positive thing?
If the exposure of the PP was/is seen by certain admins as a positive (�I believe in these changes�.This looks like some exciting and positive changes), why is it referred to as going �downstream?� Despite the lower price points, if TS and photos.com were so positive such as the low similarly priced crowdsourced microstock iStock used to be forcing the high priced trads like Getty to have to buy them so as to only be cannibalized by their own, then why are non-ex�s essentially punished by �having� to do it? If the PP is effective why the need to force people to 'use it or lose it?' Why is a perk of being Excl. being able to avoid the PP if it is so positive? Perks were always advantages. Is being out of the PP a perk and an advantage to iStock as an Exclusive? It is to me. In other words how can something be both a �good thing� and yet seen by so many as such a bad thing? I�ve avoided it since its inception and haven�t seen a financial reason to join it. Some of our best contributors also. Getty had to buy iStock to prevent the cannicalization, we don't have that resource as contributors. Why call it �downstream� if it is good, and force non-ex�s and allow Excl�s from it, but still refer to it as good?
 
Q. Do we lead other sites or follow them?
To answer the question of why PP doesn�t earn RC�s, the answer was basically �since other sites don�t use a tiered system like iStock� so you can't. (�Other sites have set royalty rates and don't use a tiered royalty rate system like iStock, therefore you won't be entitled to receive redeemed credits for files downloaded through Partner sites.) This all seems to make a massive disocnnect when we are told often how we are part of the Getty 'family' but why doesn't our family have consistent rules among its 'partner sites' that reflects the sentiment of the family?
Why is �our� policy set by what other sites do/don�t? What does it matter what other sites do if earning RC�s is a good idea for us? Why can�t RC�s be earned on OUR PP? Do other sites determine our policy and we must follow their examples? 
 
Thanks for any thoughful answers to these thought provoking questions. (End of his post.)

I think he raises some good points...

Since I guess Lobo didn't find it funny, I'll just leave this here....