Hi everyone,

A few months ago, some of you noticed that Corbis, based in Seattle, announced the decision to close its Calgary office location at the end of 2011. Although the closure doesn�t affect Corbis or Veer contributors or customers, it does mean that I�ll be leaving the company.

However, I�m pleased to announce that a familiar face will be back to lead the Veer charge into 2012: Brian O�Shea is resuming responsibilities as Manager of Veer Creative Content, in addition to continuing his involvement with the macro side of the business. Those of you who remember Brian know there�s no one better suited to this task as he has an in-depth knowledge of the industry and has exhibited a tireless commitment to representing contributor interests. I'm confident you�re in great hands with Brian driving the Veer vision forward. He�ll be stopping by to say hello shortly, so you can all get reacquainted.

I�ve very much enjoyed the opportunity to be able to participate in the conversations here, and hope you�ll continue to engage my colleagues with the same energy and passion I�ve witnessed on this forum over the past few years. The thoughtful ideas and feedback you present only help make the brand better, and I�ll still be rooting Veer on from the sidelines while navigating new adventures.

I thank you all for sharing your creativity, and wish you the best in your future endeavors.

Cheers,

Chelsey

Thanks, both of you. I've reported the details to our technology team. Hope to have this resolved soon.

Chelsey

'Click to show payment history' doesn't work on firefox but works on chrome. Anyone else having this error?

Hi fujiko,

Are you still seeing this error, or has it resolved itself?

Thanks!

Chelsey

Chelsey if you are reading this - there is a full stop where there should be a comma on this page:
http://subscription.veer.com/en-GB/plans/

ie �1,490 not �1.490

This maybe something with it having translated into pounds or something...
Because of this I found it a bit confusing at first as to whether you were referring to the price per image or something....

StockCube, I'm told this has been fixed. Thanks for reporting the error!

Chelsey

Thanks for the feedback, StockCube. I'll pass that on.

You may still see a few glitches across the site, but most things should be working now. I'll let you all know if I receive further updates throughout the day.

Thanks for your patience!

Chelsey

Hi everyone,

Our subscriptions offering is not live yet, but will be soon. We'll make sure to let you know when it's launched.

Chelsey

Hi all,

There�s going to be a brief outage that will affect both http://veer.com and http://contributor.veer.com on Wednesday, August 17th at 7:00 PM MDT. It should only last about 15 minutes, but we wanted to give you a heads up so you can plan your workflow accordingly.

Cheers,

Chelsey

Hi mtkang,

The merch Veer sells isn't typically crowd sourced. We have an in-house design team that creates original product, or partners with like-minded companies to offer product. However, if you have an idea or product you're interested in contributing to the fold, contact [email protected] and they can direct you to the appropriate people if it's an opportunity we might want to explore.

Cheers,

Chelsey

Hi all,

Thanks to those of you who have taken the keywording survey so far, and provided additional feedback here. We're eager to improve the process for you, so your input is valuable!

For those of you who haven't had a chance to check out the survey yet, you still have a week to do so--we're going to close it on Friday, July 22nd. It's really short. And the perfect excuse to procrastinate on a Friday.

Here's the link again: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/KVK5CNY

Cheers,

Chelsey

Hi all,

Last week we announced some changes coming to the veer.com Ideas section this summer. As a contributor, the biggest changes you�ll notice are to the Portfolios and Groups features of Ideas. Both of these features will be retired and removed from the site on July 8th, 2011.  However, we�re looking forward to providing you with even better tools to promote your work, and get news and updates from your Contributor Team.  Today, we�re excited to start by rolling out new and improved Public Profile pages just for contributors, to replace the old Ideas Member pages.  

Your Public Profile will act as your personalized Veer homepage to present and promote your work�it�s your starting point to update and manage your content, and you can use it to highlight and show off your best images to buyers using curated Albums. Here�s how it works:

Getting started
Click on your name (top right of all veer.com pages, as usual) to navigate to your Public Profile page in your Account. This is where you can manage both your private content�Workspace, Dashboard, and Payment settings�and the content displayed on your Public Profile page. We�ve put everything in one place in your Account to keep things simple.

Customize your page
Let customers and contributors get to know you. In the right-hand side-bar, you can upload an avatar, write a short bio, create an alias, provide contact information, and display links to your personal website, Facebook page, and Twitter stream. All of these fields are optional�share as much or as little information as you like.
 
Show off your work on veer.com
You know your work best, and now you get to choose which of your images are promoted on your Public Profile page. Present them so they shine, through your curated Albums on your page. Create Albums according to theme, shoot, season, concept�it�s all up to you. As a contributor, when you create an Album, you�ll have the option to display it on your Public Profile, or keep it private. Albums you choose to display will appear to customers on your public page. Old Albums will default to private, while any new Albums you create will default to public. Click �Manage your albums� to change visibility settings.

Promote yourself and your work
Promote your images beyond veer.com by posting your public profile URL (veer.com/artist/youralias) on your website, social networks, and in e-mails. The more people see your Veer profile and download your images, the more we can help you earn royalties.  The public link to your page lives just above your avatar, and below the Workspace, Dashboard, and Payment settings navigation.  People will see your personalized information, the Albums you�ve chosen to feature, and a selection of thumbnails from the rest of your portfolio. Buyers can also navigate to your profile from the Product Detail page that opens when they enlarge a thumbnail they�ve found while searching veer.com. Here's an example of what your page will look like: http://www.veer.com/artist/chromatica.

We hope you�ll be as excited about your new Public Profile page as we are. The ability to present buyers with customized Albums of your work is something you�ve been asking for, and we�re happy to be able to give you a tool to help you market your images better.

What�s happening to Groups?
As we noted at the top of this message, the Groups section of Ideas is going away as part of the Ideas makeover. We�re currently working on an improved platform to present you with contributor news and information directly through veer.com, though it�s not quite ready for release yet. In the meantime, we encourage you to continue to provide feedback and stay engaged with our Contributor Team through Facebook, Twitter, and [email protected]. The existing links to Groups discussions will also remain active for a time for reference, while we take inventory and find new homes for important information.

As always, we look forward to your feedback and questions. Thanks for your continued support!

Sincerely,  

The Veer Contributor Team

Hi Thomas,

Our Contributor Service team normally does an excellent job of responding promptly to emails, so I apologize that yours somehow slipped through the cracks. If you'd like to Private Message me your email address, I'll have the team contact you directly.

We had a customer-facing release this past weekend, so it's possible that created a bug that's affected your account status. We'll do some further investigating for you.

Cheers,

Chelsey

Hi dirkr,

Thanks for waiting. I�ve gotten some feedback from our legal team, and can offer some clarity to the issues you�ve raised.

All sections of the contributor agreement remain valid and enforceable�we still require complete and accurate model and property releases from contributors, and expect images to be free of logos, trademarks, etc. By making an image available for purchase on our site, we�re saying that we�ve verified that releases are valid, and images are free of certain issues that could present legal problems for the customer. We indemnify our customers through the EULA, to a maximum of $10,000 (included) or $250,000 (if the customer purchases extended coverage). In other words, what we are doing is taking on the responsibility of defending the due diligence we�ve performed on the content we represent (i.e., checking to make sure that releases provided to us are complete, accurate, and sufficient).

If we find that there is some defect in a release or image, even after performing our due diligence, we will provide our financial obligation to the customer, and do have the right to come back to the contributor due to a breach of agreement on their part.

So you�re right�to say that we assume all risk was a misleading choice of words. In an attempt to be concise, we created some confusion, and hopefully the information I�ve provided above has alleviated that. The essence of the message to customers is that we�re assuring them we�ve done our part to ensure the image they�re purchasing is free of certain legal issues, and will provide financial coverage if that turns out to not be the case. As a contributor, you have the same responsibilities you�ve always had to submit clean images and accurate releases.

Cheers,

Chelsey            

Hi folks,

Responses to your most recent questions below. I think I've addressed everything, but please let me know if I missed something.

Why isn�t my name showing up under my images on Snapfish? Why aren�t all of my images on Veer showing up on Snapfish? Why are some images missing watermarks?

I�ve bundled these questions together because the quick answer to all of them is, �We�re looking into it.� I wish I could give you a more specific answer than that, but since I�m not the person who�s in direct contact with Snapfish (or any of our partners) regarding the API, I�ve passed these questions on to the Veer team that handles the partner program, and am waiting for further information. I�ll post an update here as soon as I have some more details for you. With respect to the watermarks�we know how important it is that your images are protected, and agree that it�s unacceptable that some are missing. We�re working particularly hard to get that issue addressed immediately.

(luissantos94--Please send an email to [email protected] and we can check into your account specifically regarding the discrepancy with the Photogenica numbers.)

Is the opt-out still being considered?

Yes. We hope you�ll see the program as a positive opportunity to increase your revenue, but also understand there are reasons you may not want to participate. The partner program is still very new, so we�re continuing to monitor feedback from contributors, and haven�t ruled out offering an opt-out option.  

What�s being done about the incorrect SnapVillage descriptions and keywords? And, are we going to be able to edit our own images post-publish?

Nothing�s changed here since my responses to these questions on the previous page�we still consider fixing the SnapVillage errors a high priority, and are still listening to your feedback about the desire to be able to edit your own content. As we fix the SnapVillage keywords (and this is on our agenda for the immediate future), we will ensure the changes are pushed over to the partner sites as well.      

What�s being done about lengthy review times?

Pixart�no intentional dodging going on here; that�s not our style. My first priority in this thread has been to respond to the questions specific to the API. Review times are obviously higher than both you and I would like to see right now, and we are working hard to reduce them. These past few months, we�ve been trying out a few different kinds of workflows to see which method will allow us to get your images live fastest and most efficiently. As a result of that, some of you may have been seeing faster than normal review times, and some slower�or somewhat of a combination, as MikLav experienced when a large batch of his images that had been waiting went through all at once. The workflow tweaks we�ve made have increased production levels significantly, but we�ve also seen a large upswing in submissions in general as more and more contributors hear about Veer and hop on board. Increases in submission levels is always something we plan for, but as the interest in Veer has continued to exceed our expectations, we�re continuing to work on strategies to get your content live as fast as we can�to do so benefits everyone.

Thanks again for your feedback about the API, and your general comments. We do genuinely appreciate your engagement (even when it comes to the tough questions) so that we can keep working to improve your experience with Veer.

Further questions and comments welcome here or via [email protected].

Cheers,

Chelsey