Seeing a couple of comments in the iStock help forums and some odd results in a search I did, I think iStock has done something to break its search parsing for multi-word terms.

I typed tropical beach into the top box, photos only, and  I get in the results (many of which are beaches) a beer bottle, bunch of grapes and a dog, all isolated, all with no obvious connection to what I searched for.

Grapes, dog, beer

slobo had reported seeing a bit of grungy paper in a search for car repair, which may be the same thing. A help forum post (without examples) in the search thread mentioned this type of thing too.

Anyone else seeing this? Perhaps if we can give IS some more examples they can get it fixed faster.

Slightly off topic, but I was trying to help out a fellow newbie in the PhotoDune forums and post a reply explaining where to find something he couldn't find and when I went to submit my reply I received this error message and my reply was just wiped out!

 "Please wait 10 mins between commenting/posting"

What on earth is that about? I had just replied in a different thread to someone who was kindly trying to help me out and then in trying to return the favor I get my knuckles rapped that I have to wait (and retype everything I just typed).

I'm going to be patient, but PhotoDune really needs to fix a variety of things about the upload process, documenting what new users are to do and whatever this "don't be useful for 10 more minutes" rule is on the forums or they'll be overwhelmed by the attempts of new users to start contributing.

The admins won't be around for a few more hours yet (assuming they're all in Melbourne).

gostwyk's numbers are similar to mine. This month so far the subscription $$ are 41% of my total at SS

I am happy to see your announcement. I tried to upload my portfolio samples after passing your author quiz. I used FTP, saw the uploaded zip in the portfolio submission page, selected it, wrote a note, checked the box and when I submitted it got a 405 "not allowed" error.

Your portfolio approval process is more cumbersome than any site out there. I don't really know why it doesn't work, but if you can fix it, I'll happily go back and try again.

If I'm going to get 2,000 files uploaded the system needs to work. If now isn't a good time because you're working on the site, I'll hold off until that's done.

ETA: In fairly short order I received an e-mail that my samples had been received - so perhaps the error message was harmless. then I just received a note that I've been approved. I'll try a batch via FTP and see how things are working. If someone went in to fix this, many thanks.

The competition, such as it is, between Thinkstock and SS will be over the prices buyers pay, not commissions to contributors.

To beat SS for a buyer's business they're already cheaper for an annual subscription, they offer 10% off images at Getty and there is some content not on the micros in the mix. So far that hasn't stolen SS's thunder as far as I can tell (although I obviously don't have any access to data to back that up). I think the flow of new content into SS is considerably greater than it is at Thinkstock which matters more to subscription buyers than pay as you go buyers.

If IS really wants to get exclusive content onto Thinkstock en masse, especially from the top sellers, they'll either have to offer more for royalties or remove the opt out (which they've already done for Getty contracts). Having that new content might get them some leverage to have buyers from SS consider TS, but they'd be giving up all that extra independent content that isn't on IS because of the teeny tiny upload limits and buyers might not find that compelling.

If they want to get the existing independent content from IS onto TS they need to fix whatever's busted in the internals that transfer files from A to B. It's now nearly 2 months since we were forced into the PP and none of the files have made it over. So SS gets to have the busy season unmarred by additional competition from TS in any way.

By the time IS/Getty/H&F get their act together it may be like Bing vs. Google: even if Bing works OK, if a happy Google user (e.g. me) has no reason to switch, you stay where you are.

Quote from: helix7 on November 20, 2011, 22:16

Quote from: hoi ha on November 20, 2011, 21:08

...This is microstock - IS has forgotten that very basic concept and are now suffering the consequences.

...It's possible that they haven't forgotten what microstock is about, and are just choosing to try a different pricing model and leaving microstock behind. I don't happen to agree with that position, if that is in fact what they are doing, but it does put things in a different perspective. In theory, things might not be so bad at istock HQ and they may just be planning to try and ride out the current slow-down in sales volume while slow and steady price increase up their profits.

Yes I agree with you on this - but I also don't think there is much of a market where they are going - there are too many great images available at the micro level - and I am not sure they are at the mid-level of stock either - they are quite close to where the original Getty prices used to be. Or at least the Getty I used to buy at (in Asia I think they were somewhat cheaper).

If you look at this old (June 2011) blog post by John Lund, he's very happy to see the Agency Collection (in which he already participated) being distributed on iStock at Getty prices. From that blog "I am missing a huge segment of the stock photography market�until now." and "Think about it�now I can have images that are available through both Getty and iStockphoto�and all without having to license the images at microstock prices! Is that cool or what?"

If iStock could have managed this clever trick without driving away buyers for their regular collection, it could possibly have been a win-win. I think that the massive best match shifts in favor of Vetta/Agency and the long time before they grudgingly implemented a price slider (that even KKT admitted in that interview in Milan was something that users in their testing didn't even notice was there; I know some think it's OK, but I still think it's a poor implementation) drove regular buyers away.

I'm guessing they thought they could do both chunks of the market and keep Getty/H&F happy while continuing business as usual in the market segment that made them successful. They messed that up big time and the only remaining question is whether they have to retreat to being Getty lite and give up the microstock area to Thinkstock or whether they can make enough corrections to fix what they broke.

When you're big and the market leader you have much more leeway than other players to mess up and fix things. I have to say that the continuing eff up in software development isn't reassuring - I'm assuming they're on a very tight leash for spending and can't get the expertise they so clearly need.

I think a few things are a very big deal.

1) There was no "oops" in the forums and/or via e-mail from iStock to announce that they'd messed up and were working diligently to fix this. As with the premature removal of the exclusive EL bonus last year, this was brought up by contributors and only after a while of complaining was there some admin response. That either means they didn't know about the problem or they have so little regard for contributor relations that they couldn't be bothered to try and manage the situation.

2) I have no confidence that the fix will be correct. When they made the EL bonus back payments they were wrong. When a number of contributors pointed that out to iStock, CR's response was that there was a problem with the script to calculate the back payments but that as it was slightly over, they weren't going to fix it. In my case I knew that to be true even though I didn't know what the exact amount should have been (because contributors aren't privvy to the size of image purchased with an EL so we can't do the math for them).

3) We have no choice - other than leaving iStock - but to accept whatever number they come up with. We don't know the details of each sale - royalty percentage, price paid per credit, credits per sale. We can't get a decent simple accounting of each transaction from our agent - and producing a downloadable csv file with the details is the sort of thing computers are well suited for doing. I don't think we have any regulatory agency that will require this accounting. So when our agent makes repeated mistakes in accounting - that they eventually acknowledge - and the whole system is based on trust, it feels like a very big deal to some contributors.

As far as the partner program goes, I'm an unwilling about-to-be-participant in that, but I wish they'd sh*1 or get off the pot on the inclusion of independent content. Income from that might help offset some of the dips at IS, but the silver lining is perhaps they'll have the payments fixed before they figure out how to move the independent content over.

One or two mistakes every now and then is part and parcel of every operation. Multiple, serious relatively frequent sc*3w ups in just about every part of their site operation indicates something else to me.

It certainly seems like good news - although like logos and PNG, it's "coming soon"

I deleted all my vectors in September as I wasn't having them go to PP, so I don't have any personal stake in that any more.

Our dear friends at Getty are once again offering a take-it-or-get-out contract change to photographers. This time it's editorial. See the PDN report here (and thanks to sjlocke for posting on FB as I hadn't seen it yet).

It doesn't directly affect those of us selling via the micros, but following on from the April 2011 contract changes, again shoved down contributor's throats, it doesn't signal anything good for contributors, IMO. All this talk of more opportunity would be fine if it actually happened, but I'm not aware of any signs of Getty growing markets or volumes, just trying to get a larger slice of the pie for itself.

Here is a BJP article about the Spring changes. And some blog comments on it here. Here is an earlier MSG thread on this.

Just when I worry that I'm overstating the case for iStock's software department being incompetent, we get another gem like this. Doesn't anyone test anything before they push it live? And if they do test it and didn't find that, then their testers aren't competent either.

... of course now they're getting a bigger slice of your royalties, which makes them more profitable - but I guess that's the catch 22...

There's a cloud to every silver lining

We all have to make the best of the situation in which we find ourselves. Any answer which says you should license your own images (something that I think in other circumstances they prohibit) has a padded-cell quality to it. And the inability to provide a straightforward answer to a straightforward question in one or two exchanges is just embarrassing.

It's lovely and makes time feel very floaty and ethereal (much more pleasant that it feels day to day!). Thank you so much for posting that.

I'd think that with the right scenes - shorter - you could  make some very salable stock short videos with those techniques.