Well, you're certainly entitled to your opinion, as I said.  But I have provided enough evidence to support my conclusions.  Whether you and/or Tickstock are, in fact shills, I have no way of knowing, but your behavior certainly suggests it to a large enough degree to make it a reasonable hypothesis. 

FWIW, calling people or their opinions "mad", "bogus", "weird", "nasty, and/or "bitter", is not in any way proof to the contrary.  In fact, it is generally a tactic employed by those who have no rational counter argument.

Oh for goodness sake! All of this stupid because I have opinions which differ from your own. And opinions which I feel I have expressed in a civil and I hope reasonably intelligent manner.

Obviously I cannot provide a counter argument because how can I defend myself against this random accusation that I am a shill ? Which is why I said that I did not know where to begin.

Basically - if I disagree with you then you call me a shill. So anyone who expresses a positive opinion about iStock is potentially a shill - especially if they are regularly positive. Or in my case just not utterly negative - because anything less than completely negative seems to pass for positive here currently.

It's * insulting.

Then why are you here? 

ETA:  I am not encouraging you to leave, BTW.  I don't have a problem with people posting stuff I disagree with.  However if I disagree with it, I'm going to say so.   You may not be a shill.  However it is an increasingly common phenomenon online in industry forums for companies to have their employees monitor and shout down members who post negatively about the company.  Some guys at Fox admitted to having dozens of identities and trolling the web to attack anyone who posted negatively about Fox. 

The amount of time you and Tickstock spend in this forum pouring water on every single negative comment about Istock is suspect.  Anyone who had another job simply wouldn't have the time for it. 

It also seems you guys work as a tag-team.  That's not a personal insult, BTW, but an observation.  He gets fed up, and then suddenly there you are to take over.

I don't know where to begin with this utterly silly nonsense. You are finding stuff which simply is not there and drawing bogus, weird and almost nasty conclusions.

On the one hand you are saying that you are happy to listen to other points of view - but the result of me posting opinion which contradicts your own is that you accuse me of being a shill.

The tag-team thing is especially mad.

From what I remembered, you had to seek permission for each individual image. However, there is a new team, things may be different. Please let us know how it turns out.

My recollection is that this was for rejected content. Not for content which one chooses to deactivate oneself.

But (for goodness sake) please don't take my word for it. I am obviously going to have a thorough read of the agreement - or possibly even pay someone to read it for me. I think the agreement is likely to give the best objective answer.

Quote from: Sedge on November 22, 2013, 13:37

Why don't you just quit responding altogether?

 

I've been thinking that might be a good idea.  You even got a +1 from me.

i don't think you should let yourself be beaten. There are too few people posting here with a positive or neutral outlook.

Unfortunately, despite the keywords article, they don't seem to have got inspectors onto checking keywords yet.

Yet? They are clearly building a system which they intend to be based on relevancy. A similar but not identical system is in place at Alamy. Nobody inspects keywords ay Alamy either - but bad key wording is counter-productive.

The keyword article is for contributors and not inspectors.

But it's still grossly embarrassing for iS that the IT team can break it and not fix it, but volunteer contributors can write scripts which do the job in their own time

How do you know that it is grossly embarrassing - unless of course you somehow know why it is not currently working ?

Clearly the site is being gradually re-architected - fixing a big website without taking it down for ages is analogous to trying to replace the engine in a car one part at a time whilst the car is being driven at speed. It's difficult. And perhaps the previous code behind stats was not compatible with new design.  Or perhaps it represented a bottleneck which needed to be addressed.

The thing we seem to have here in relationship to iStock is that every single tiny thing is now perceived and expressed in over-dramatised  exaggerated superlatives. Everything is the most or the worst etc. That's stupid.

It's not necessarily even slightly embarrassing. It may very well be the only option possible. Most likely they will get to it when the time comes but there is other stuff higher up the list. Actually - why not simply assume that it is the least worst possible solution in the situation which exists.

There is absolutely no defending Istock's incompetence on this one

And I will take that challenge:

It's not as important as making the site better for customers. It should not be a priority when they obviously have so much else on. The site is working much better than it was even a month ago (I hope I don't jinx things saying that). And in general everything seems to be going in the right direction at iStock. Obviously that goes against the mood here - but this place does tend to be over represented by people with an axe to grind. And yet even here, even the indies have had to admit that the evil PP suddenly seems to have come good.

It isn't crucial - we can still see what we have earned, which images have sold etc and we can assume that sooner or later it will be back in some form. Though frankly I would be quite happy with a monthly report updated as a batch FWIW.

The stock owning public seemed pretty grateful to sell out to H&F in 2007 though. Revenues have fallen since then, they've got all that debt and now a major competitor/threat has emerged in the form of SS. Seems to me that Getty's prospects now are a lot less rosy than they appeared to be in 2007.

The stock was over-valued in 2007 on the back of having risen unrealistically in the credit fuelled boom. That made it very difficult for them to operate as a company. Going private was surely the best thing. Many other companies were going private or buying back shares at the same time. And look how much money it has made for people since.

You talk about debt as if that were always a pejorative thing. It's no different from a mortgage. Others would simply call that corporate finance. Certainly I think there is a danger of over-exaggerating its importance - and ultimately the debt exists because the lenders believe in the company. And because Getty continues to do what it has always done - which is to make money. You always talk Getty down - but it's a valuable company run by bright people who obviously have a clear sense of their vision of image as commodity. Yes we might not love it in the same way as we could love some other stock agency. Though I love much of the very intelligent and creative work which people have been able to produce because Getty exists.

SS is a great company. But you definitely couldn't love that either. And TBH I believe that they were extremely lucky with their IPO. Perhaps there would have been a point after Facebook when they worried about going ahead with it. And they have been lucky since the IPO that stocks have continued to boom. FWIW I think that they remain desperately over exposed to the microstock subscription market. That seems like having nearly all of your eggs in one basket. And, lets face it, the investors haven't got much of a clue if Seeking Alpha is anything to go by.

Quote from: gostwyck on November 19, 2013, 14:38

Quote from: ksgal on November 19, 2013, 12:36

I predict IStock will be sold again.

I think Getty is going to squeeze all the juice out and then throw the rest away.

No. Getty will be sold again (with IS included). Carlyle have a lot of money tied up in Getty and, with the level of debt and falling revenues reported, it's not clear to me where they are going to get a decent return from it.

Getty have already squeezed all the juice out of IS anyway. So much so that they nearly killed it.

I don't think it's been nearly killed.  You are forgetting that iStock is still making a lot more than Shutterstock, at least according to Jon Oringer. 
I do agree that IF iStock is ever sold it will be as part of Getty, there is no way to separate them now.

I believe they will want to take it public again. But not yet. At the moment they seem to be in the process of building value. The down economy and pessimistic expectations gives them a good space within which to reinvent yet again IMO.

Nowadays, in similar non-CV examples, you'd have to do the same even more, because the bug I noted a couple of weeks back whereby trying to add a two (or more) word phrase 'for your own use' hasn't been fixed (as of yesterday), so even searching on the phrase inside quotes won't return the file.

Seems fine. Perhaps it is an issue at your end. Eg -

"sandwich tern"

'sandwich tern'

In terms of the keywords and CV terms you would like added, why not try to work with them towards a positive outcome ? I am sure you would have a lot to add.

Photoshelter really annoy me for their spamming/marketing. Two or three years ago I gave them my email address in order to see an article (which was rubbish). Ever since they have bugged me with offers -> seemingly every couple of weeks it is the last chance to sign up for this or that special never again offer. And yet somehow similar offers always come along again.

IMO self hosting best suits organizations with existing traffic - for example a museum or collection which happens to also need to sometimes be able to sell images. But it is not the primary business. Eg if selling images is a need they need to be able to service.

Typical comment, forgetting this is an international board with many non English speakers. Smileys are a good way to replace facial expressions, jic

Emoticons might sometimes help to clarify meaning. Just like a single exclamation. Over-used they take away meaning. Just like multiple exclamations. Tickstock's comic sans analogy was a good one.

Imagine if someone giggled at the end of every sentence.