I'm experiencing the same. One terrific day and one or two sub par days and the cycle repeats. If it stays like that I guess it creates a better estimate of sales than a completely random download number like before.

In the interest of fairness I decided to post in the HQ thread. But if its tampered or erased/edited out, I want to post it here for preservation.   Thanks!

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About 14 months ago the company made a decision to cut many of our royalties by large amounts in order to remain sustainable.

The company is still here be it because of that or other circumstances; however sales across the board have slowed from the smaller producer to the image factory entrepreneur.

With all the savings that were allocated from exclusives and non exclusives; what is being done to regain the trust of buyers and suppliers in order to once again be where the company 2 years ago proclaimed to be not only healthy but on top of the business with large growth.

We have been left in the dark regarding the state of the company, future prospects and leadership guidance that used to characterize iStock.  Every December- January Bruce and Kelly gave a sort of state of iStock message with lots of info regarding the company's performance, growth, success and decisions to carry it forward.

This time around we had to find out in 3rd party blogs that a significant part of the company was let go and after it was not contained we got an official message from HQ.

We as suppliers of content need to know where the ship is, where its headed and if its healthy for the voyage ahead.  We don't need exact figures, we need credible assurances by real people. We have been kept in the dark for so long that the trust we once possessed has almost extinguished.

So in concise terms:

How is the company doing?

What is being done to improve the bottom line of contributors?

What steps necessary are being considered to retain current buyers and attract new ones or those that searched elsewhere?

What value does exclusivity play in all of this, considering many of us have battered a pretty unreliable year?

What incentives are being considered to keep exclusives and attract non-exclusive content to iStock first, instead of the competition? Non exclusive search has been at the back with many withdrawing new uploads.

Has Video been affected by these changes and in what measure?  Can we expect better competitive pricing structures, editorial video and faster inspections that are competitive with other sites?

We all want a healthy company and an even healthier communication between the parts.   We contributors have patiently waited for your side to show interest in keeping us informed. We are all ears and are prepared to listen and understand current developments.

Thank you!
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Quote from: gostwyck on January 19, 2012, 19:51

Quote from: jamesbenet on January 19, 2012, 18:45

His beliefs and reputation will follow him, not related to iStock.  At least I think he fought for us all the way as long as he could. That is why he got the axe.

You can stick your faux sympathy where the sun doesn't shine. Thompson's 'beliefs and reputation' as well as his actions led to millions of dollars of commissions being diverted from contributors to Istock during his watch. He was in charge of Istock when they offered to 'grandfather' canister levels and then essentially went back on that a few months later. If he'd had genuinely 'fought for us' and not got his way then he should have resigned at the time. To not have done so, as the man in charge, meant he endorsed the changes (far more than his 'beliefs and reputation').

Under Thompson's watch the most damaging series of actions in Istock's history occurred and have resulted in the downfall of the immensely strong business he inherited. If he wasn't responsible for that then at very best he was a weak and ineffective COO promoted way beyond his capability and his level of courage. He's lost us all a lot of money. F*ck him.

I think jamesbenet was talking about JJRD, not Thompson. But I agree with all of your statements about Thompson above, for sure.

Yes I was talking about JJRD, Thomson is a whole other story.    Thomson was a manager under the Getty influence and his reality distortion and twisting were pretty contrarian to what Bruce and the old iStock were all about.   Every time he tried to fix things in a statement he shoveled deeper.   Wonder if the universe has some sort of justice system that is being served in his case.   I don't wish any of them wrong but I don't consider Kelly to be a friend of artists, he probably knew the grand plan years ago and steered the boat until it hit the rocks. He reminds me of the recent events with him jumping into the Getty lifeboat right after he saw the disaster, funny thing is the coastguard at Getty punched a big hole in his raft.

Wonder what kind of golden parachute Kelly got today?

If a book is ever written about all of this... I am interested in what Kelly might shed light into.  At least JJRD got out with his dignity and beliefs in place.  rogermexico seems to be one of the few original faces left, hope he is not forced to sell his soul or leave.

iStock resembles a red giant star in the final stages of collapse.   Shine bright and expand then sheds its content; then a cold core cinder remains at the center slowly cooling until there is nothing left.

I get where you're coming from, but I have to admit that I've worked at jobs that I totally didn't believe in and were against my principles, because there weren't, at the times, any options, and I needed the job.  It eats away at you, you lose some self-respect -- but you also do what you have to do.  So if they weren't in a position that they could leave on principle -- and it's a lousy economy to do so -- I get that, and I feel for how they must have felt about it.    

Very well put, don't demonize the gears of the machine when the brain controller has got them cornered. In this economy I am sure many admins just avoided any confrontation to keep that paycheck. I can't blame them.

I know of many back end people over the years that have given their full effort to their jobs at iStock and if any of them are affected by this then... I am in solidarity and in support for them to find a job soon. Nothing is as black and white as it seems on the surface; plus we have no info only speculation at best right now.

Maybe they were just the only ones who had the guts to leave, and a paycheck wouldn't convince them otherwise. Not that Bruce needed the money, of course. But he could have had a nice cushy job at Getty for a long time if he wanted it, and he opted to walk away.

Those who stayed apparently are comfortable with helping H&F get what they want, regardless of what it ends up costing everyone.

Bruce and Rob are a different kind of person with a different kind of character. They have ideals that are stronger than lust for golden riches.   For me the most disheartening thing was reading the posts by Admins when the whole RC discussion was happening and how they were forced to sell the plan as if it was their own reasoning of great fairness.

They wanted to keep their jobs but they lost a whole lot of good karma in that endeavor.   How things change in one short year and change... Wonder what will happen by next year, maybe it will be a completely different picture.

My December was at 2006 levels which is quite pathetic.    Needless to say I am no happy crown holder.

The Lytro camera released today outputs 11 megarays or around 1 Megapixel with 1080px on its height. No word on the width but I'm betting 1200px.   Hardly stock material. 

In a few generations it will be an incredible tool in the arsenal but right now it is pretty useless besides net pic sharing.  In Macro imaging and microscopy where you usually have to layer and merge several depth exposures this camera could revolutionize those markets.

Lets hope the technology survives until it matures in the market.  I have a Lytro order option right now that lapses in a week. Somehow I don't think it is enough resolution to buy it.   At 3MP it would be a different story, 1MP is just too low.

I used macs for 12 years before switching to the PC mainly for availability of 3D Applications.  Macs have always been overpriced and over-hyped but I believe the legacy of Jobs lies in many of the unintended consequences of pushing the industry forward. I like macs but I rather have my family use them while I build a PC with copied GUI from Apple that runs everything I need at 1/2 the price and with all the software.

1) Jobs, Woz, Warnock made desktop publishing possible with the invention of the Mac.  Windows, Unix and Linux followed much much later.

2) The Apple II created the first computer that actually did something useful and introduced the masses to it.  The Altair was only for Uber geeks and it usually was a non working machine most of the time and it sold less than 5k machines.

3) Pixar:  3D animation had stagnated for a decade in high end workstations. Pixar created a huge boom with their Renderman and use of tech for entertainment. Its labs created many of the ideas and usability paradigms that define 3D design and animation today. They were not alone but by Jobs rescuing Pixar from Lucas Film before it closed its doors, created an avenue for entertainment that is in the billions now with thousands of jobs behind it.

4) Pixar single-handedly with Jobs and Lasseter revived Distey Studios into the fortress it is today. They were going bankrupt.

5) Changed the way we buy and access music in a legal way. iTunes may not have been the first, cheapest or most ideal solution but they pushed the market forward with a clear vision and it is still #1 today by a large margin.  I personally don't like it but the iPod changed everything. You can buy a cheaper player and get MP3s on it but you could always bootleg old cassette tapes from your friends and play them on your Matsushita player in the 80s. The Walkman however changed the way we listen to music the same as the iPod moved the way forward for clones to copy them off.

6) Smartphones were a mess before the iPod now we have Android and others competing but before it was painful at best. It jumped the industry almost a decade forward from lack of innovation and stagnation.

7) iPad is an evolution of the smartphone and the laptop. However no one made it as good or as useful before. Once again Steve jumped to the future with great style, usefulness and taste.

All in all you can say many things about Jobs but he was the spindle that moved technology forward and all others followed like sheep. That is his most important contribution, waking up the tech industry to the possibilities of what was already there by amalgamating technologies from different vendors and creating something deeply unique, useful and powerful.

and so on...  killing the floppy, USB, Flat panel monitor use..... 

1080p HD Video at 30 frames with gyro stabilization.

8MP improved camera.   I am guessing it's a good enough device for shooting stock video and photos in bright light.   

The iPhone 5 will probably be around the corner early next year same as what happened with the 3G and 3Gs.

Good product same old design, playing it safe and boring.  I miss the Stevenote!

Interesting thread and topic... Ive had pretty bad sales for September, quite unusual and I think Ive pinpointed the cause:

 (Bad Karma)^2 [(Microstock Model) (Bruce Leaving) (Getty)] + [(Higher Prices)(Economic Crisis)]
_________________________________________________________________________________ = iStock '11

                         [(Competition)(Bad Word Of Mouth) (Best Match) ^3] - (Redeemed Credit System) ^2

Jodi Jacobson is assuming if a sale doesn't happen in 18mo it should go elsewhere and find a a place to sell.

Files older than 18mo are being targeted regardless of sales.   I think there is a lot of contributor confusion there.

As an exclusive "I Agreed" to the terms last night after a full day of reading and thought.  As exclusive it is actually changing very little on my end. I already have most of my footage on Getty, I have most of my non sellers on PP since 4mo ago and some content will migrate to Vetta/Agency and video to other partner sites.

In video we have been asking for lower prices for more mundane and not so spectacular shots and it seems the way they want to go about it is by offering them on other sites without adjusting prices down on iStock.    Ive been doing fairly well with video on Getty and time will tell how much better it gets if at all.    We have to compete with sites like Pond5 which give HD videos almost away at $10 in many instances.   This is a way to do it.

The master grand plan of this whole announcement is for iStock/Getty to flood the market of lower priced sites with the images that are available on Shutterstock, DT, FT, Canstock etc...  That way they will have a chance at diluting the market and maybe even offer lower prices for customers in order to hurt the competition with the same content for cheaper.  Non exclusives IMO are the main target of this and they know they can do it because most non exclusives have most of their images on so many sites that iStock calculates that one more site or multitude of sites wont be a burden since it will be automatically ingested, it will be instant dilution of the market.   Getty will offer competition from the bottom to the top.

Now for Exclusives I see it as a minor adjustment but for Non Exclusives it can be quite a step.  In any case the PP for non exclusives should in some way allow artists to include or exclude files from the offering.  This is probably the main problem with this whole thing.  I know that it is extremely important that as an exclusive PP files can be selected and excluded just like before.   If I didn't have that option I wouldn't have agreed. But since that isn't changing for Exclusives I see no major change in my case.  As a non exclusive it seems you have your work cut out for you.

LOL Lisa 

Yeah well he is a personal hero, I like that image because it conveys pure outrage.

However full contrarian thinking wont get us anywhere. I plan to create a balanced approach to the survey knowing full well that it could just be shafted by a keystroke.

Who knows what the future will bring but I am sure that if they continue to milk us with even less % revenue for the contributor I won't have the hope and decency I have endured for the last year.

There needs to be a change of course and approach to the dealings of late and if they only knew that the revenue will increase and competition decrease if they did the right thing.

Pay fair wages to contributors = More exclusives and less pictures for other sites.

Less pictures on other sites = Less clients to buy them = Less competition

Less Competition = iStock Grows revenues and gets more traffic

iStock Grows Stronger = They might start to pay 20% to exclusives. 

So I'm not sure if it will be a good thing or a bad thing.   All I know is that as of today they could change a load of things for the better!