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Messages - gclk
51
« on: February 23, 2012, 03:05 »
Remember after the big Christmas/New Year fraud problem, there was a conference call with NDAs brandished and signed... I'm pretty sure at the time we were told that in the near future we'd all get to know what had gone wrong, and why there was a need for NDAs.
Did anyone see any follow-up information about that? The only change I saw was that 'refund notices' were changed so that we can't now tell if a customer refund has been given (ie a genuine refund to a genuine customer), or a result of criminal activity which has meant our work has been stolen again.
52
« on: January 29, 2012, 18:17 »
Its not like this "edstock" collection is stealing any downloads from anyone.
Over 120K files and less then 5K sales.
Maybe true - in a lot of cases, EdStock's huge blocks of content might not be stealing downloads from other contributors, but just making buyers abandon any hope that iStock might have what they want. A buyer looking for editorial files of the city of Berlin might just never find all the gems from normal contributors that are hidden away on pages 23 to 25 (of 25). Having said that, if they're searching for 'Berlin' but what they wanted was 18 pages of celebrity poses, then they've struck lucky! 
53
« on: January 29, 2012, 09:57 »
Now that EdStock's fast-growing portfolio has over 120,000 images (far larger than the Vetta and Agency collections combined), I'm starting to wonder if there's any point left in submitting new Editorial work to iStock. The problem is that no matter the age of EdStock's files, they get sorted by the date they were uploaded to iStock, rather than the date they were taken. That's unfortunately the exact opposite of what we were told when EdStock was introduced ( 'On a technical note, we will be dating these files so that our system recognizes their original creation date, and not the date they are uploaded to iStock. This is being done to ensure that these new files do not dominate our Best Match sort en masse.' - www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=330294). The files may (sometimes) be properly dated with their original creating date, but it doesn't seem to help - that's not what is being recognised by the system, as its very easy to see when sorting results by 'File Age'. So when a fresh dumping of hundreds or thousands of EdStock files with a certain keyword lands on the iStock collection, the fact that they were taken at different points over the last twelve years or more doesn't matter - they go to the front of the 'File Age' sorting, and at or near the front of the Best Match. Good luck to people who uploaded images for any partular location/brand/subject before a consignment of EdStock content arrives. Since August last year I've been doing my best to bring this to the attention of the fine people at iStock, but so far there seems to be absolutely zero interest. No response to the sitemails, emails, support tickets or complaints raised on the subject, except to say that I should not mention it in iStock forum. My guess is that if they do one day communicate about it, it'll be to say something along the lines of 'yeah well, best match will sort it out over time'. But check out an editorial-only search for 'Volkswagen' which received an EdStock dumping last autumn. Still there on the first page of results is a portrait of Bernd Pischetsrieder taken almost eleven years ago. The photo was taken in 2001 when Mr Pischetsrieder was about to take over as chairman of VW. He then left VW in 2006. No problem with the image being among EdStock's portfolio, it's just a good example of a very old EdStock file, which is placed far above editorial images from other contributors, taken ten years later, in October 2011. As new (well, mostly old) EdStock content arrives, all the recently arrived editorial content from everybody else gets pushed pages and pages back. Sometimes if a file managed to sell well before the EdStock onslaught, best match might put it ahead of a new block of EdStock content, but the vast majority of files just get buried. Try an Editorial-only search for any of these to see examples where everybody else's work gets displaced by slabs of EdStock content: Los Angeles | Berlin | Volkswagen | Edinburgh | Rome | Government | France Seems that if you do have Editorial content on iStock, you just have to keep your fingers crossed until the day when a huge batch of EdStock files will come along and take their place in front of yours. /long-winded-rant
54
« on: January 23, 2012, 08:54 »
On top of the redundancies it's not encouraging to see that - far as I can tell from www.istockphoto.com/istock_careers - there are no open positions at any level or skillset at the company.
that makes perfect sense, if you had an open position you would offer it to someone who was there
Maybe when that's possible, but a person in charge of the global content team might not want, or be qualified to take a graduate level junior programming position (for example).
55
« on: January 23, 2012, 08:04 »
On top of the redundancies it's not encouraging to see that - far as I can tell from www.istockphoto.com/istock_careers - there are no open positions at any level or skillset at the company.
56
« on: September 09, 2011, 05:58 »
It seems that the internet loves one big company that dominates the sector. Just look at Ebay, Facebook, Amazon and Google. They have competition but they just seem to get bigger.
It looked like istock would do that with microstock but perhaps shutterstock are going to be the big fish? I just hope that doesn't force Getty in to making them an offer they can't refuse. Hopefully they will be gobbling up Getty one day.
I'm glad to see SS providing strong and high quality competition, as it forces iStock to up their game if they want to keep their customers and their artists. Suppose especially with exclusive artists, iStock must realise that there's a critical point of alienation and falling income where significant numbers of artists would realise they could do better if they dropped exclusivity. Maybe one reason behind SS's growing success is their generous referral program - apparently they pay up to $200 for a referral based on how much the new customer buys. Supposedly iStock have a new referral system up their sleeve. If they want to compete it's going to have to be a serious step up from the new max-$20-but-ridden-with-catches system.
57
« on: September 08, 2011, 10:59 »
Hmmm. Do you remember if there was a similar, unavoidable 'caching' issue when you moved down from 20%?
58
« on: September 08, 2011, 01:13 »
^ Stranger and stranger... I googled the photographer in the top three images (he's named in the caption), and he's an extremely accomplished and well awarded photographer, with some very high quality sports images. Can't imagine why he would have uploaded those safari images - especially the top one - to Getty in the first place.
59
« on: September 03, 2011, 19:26 »
Wow, a week and a bit later and now up to 31217 files 
60
« on: August 29, 2011, 04:22 »
I like his quip when asked if H&F are looking for an exit any time soon: "Well they're private equity, which means that they were looking for an exit before they made their entrance, 'cos that's how their model works"
61
« on: August 28, 2011, 13:55 »
Here: http://video.ft.com/v/1127631250001/Getty-Images-and-a-digital-revolutionHe doesn't say anything unexpected - doesn't even specifically mention iStock, but thought people might be interested, especially in what he says towards the end about Getty's relationship with H&F. ETA - can't get that link to work directly for some reason, but if you follow the link then enter 'Jonathan Klein' in the search box, the video plays OK.
62
« on: August 26, 2011, 12:24 »
all answers above are right, but lagereek's in particular may also explain why saturdays are usually worse than sundays: friday night hangover effect on next morning
I agree, there's probably lots of factors which usually make Friday the weakest weekday for sales - projects are wrapping up, people are leaving early for the weekend, the Friday afternoon skive etc. But I think the fact that iStock runs on Calgary time is the strongest factor, since Calgary is in one of the world's latest (as it were) timezone. Sales on what counts as 'Sunday' sales usually look much better than Saturday because by the end of Calgary's Sunday, much of the world has been up and working for many hours. In fact by midnight on Calgary's Sunday, cities like Auckland and Sydney have pretty much finished Monday's work day (by then it's 6pm in Auckland and 4pm in Sydney if my calculations worked out). Japan, Korea and China aren't far behind that. So back in the days when iStock had an annual 100% royalties day  , they were careful to make sure it fell on a Friday to cash in on the fact that they were only paying for weekend sales in much of the world.
63
« on: August 25, 2011, 02:42 »
@StanRohrer and @ShadySue - thanks for posting, lots of great points in there. Hope some positive action will come out of the survey results.
Wonder if SurveyMonkey go through the returned surveys as part of their service. If so, I guess their reaction will be along the lines of "Holy smokes, this company is in dire straights"
64
« on: August 24, 2011, 13:07 »
^ Yep - seems that in 24 hours EdStock has had almost 10,000 files accepted. I've been waiting over a week to have one accepted, and probably still have 2 more weeks to wait.
Definitely no special treatment going on then.
65
« on: August 24, 2011, 06:31 »
..putting that user in the top five of all contributors by number of files on the site.
Does anybody know if the promised work that was going to be done to bring Edstock's work closer to the standard required for everyone else on iStock was even started before this new gigantic ingestion? Or was that just quietly dropped like so many other things? Suppose we may as well forget about it if JJRD and his team would have to go though 15,000 files. Maybe it'll be 30,000 files by this time next week.
And - in case you want a laugh - from the OP of the original thread about the Edstock ingestion: The content will be treated just like any other content on iStockphoto and is not being given any special treatment.
66
« on: August 23, 2011, 16:57 »
Suppose that using a company's forums to point out that the company has gone from being the most successful in its class to position number three in just 8 months is unlikely to be popular with management.
67
« on: August 23, 2011, 04:04 »
Still no survey here, I very much like the constructive comments you all have posted. Lets hope they have the decency and foresight to gather this data and make a case to better the strained relationship with suppliers and buyers.
I frankly believe that if iStock didn't cut the royalties and instead fueled better returns for exclusivity and poured more money into advertizing with a credit price decrease of sorts... The company would be growing much more than it is today with heavier revenues and not at the cost of morale and alienating their crop growers.
I am willing to give Rebecca and any new management the benefit of the doubt. They could very easily turn the tide and fortify this enterprise, lets just hope they have a clear mind to do it. Wishful thinking? How worse can it get?
I'm with you on all that James, and in the survey I made that point in your middle lines (among quite a few others  . It's ironic that the steps taken last September, supposedly to increase iStock's profitability and sustainability, could end up being the most important factors in destroying profitability and making the company unsustainable. If Getty have made the choice that they do want iStock to succeed, hopefully Rebecca will work to turn things around and sweep away the culture and practises of the past which have so quickly destroyed community and collaboration, elevated iStock to be an international laughing stock (remember Chase Jarvis et al, gleefully repeating Kelly's "unsustainable" claims, or Steve Shankland's CNET article about iStock "turning from cultivating its community of contributors to strip-mining it"), and lost the backing of huge numbers of buyers and contributors who used to be enthusiastic and positive about the company.
68
« on: August 22, 2011, 07:19 »
Filled out the survey last night. I liked the way there's plenty opportunity to write opinions freely in text boxes.
Very much hope iStock will go through the surveys properly and some positive changes will result. After 11 months of disappointment, broken promises, cynicism and all the rest of it, the ball is in iStock's court to turn things around, if they want to. I'm being optimistic and hoping this survey is the first stage in that process.
Doing similar surveys of customers and iStock staff would also be useful if iStock are interested in knowing where they've been going wrong and how to fix it.
69
« on: August 17, 2011, 10:28 »
It could be one of the first decisions by the new part time boss of istock to maximise the companies profit at the expense of exclusives. many of which are complaining about weird severe drops.
I see the new leadership is wise. 90% of exclusives wouldn't leave even if their earnings were sliced in half  . Not saying I support cutting earnings, but OTOH, it's time we indies finally get some action . They'll get some new exclusives that way  . She indeed is a smart girl;)
You can put me down as one of your 10% of exclusives who would drop exclusivity if their earnings were halved  If there has been a shift of sales form exclusive to non-exclusive (and there seems to be building direct evidence to support that) I reckon there's a high chance that it wasn't done on purpose. Perhaps there was a change in the price mix of files that he best match returns which had a side-effect of a non-exclusive boost. But with so many people reporting major changes caused by cookies etc, seems most likely that the plummeting sales for exclusives and rising sales for non-exclusives is an unexpected consequence of something else.
70
« on: August 16, 2011, 08:33 »
I noticed a major best match shake this morning. One i'm not used to seeing. Hope is for the better.
Interesting that there's been a big shake in your results - with my location & settings there doesn't seem to be a big difference. I just re-did some of the search terms from yesterday's location test - pregnant, cityscape and food and compared the results. Using the same locations/machine/browser/cookies and all that, the files returned yesterday and today looked very similar, with little more than a few files swapping position in the best match. Seems we're gradually moving further away from a monolithic 'Best Match' that's consistent for everyone towards a kind of 'Tailored Match'. I think that's good in lots of ways - especially if it means no longer having a few files always dominating certain big searches all over the world, all of the time. Seems to me that a problem with adding more and more complexity to the Best Match is that it becomes even more difficult for HQ to have a clue about the consequences of the changes they make.
71
« on: August 15, 2011, 17:07 »
I am still more than happy with the way Istock is performing.How about YOU.
what would you see as the future and how best would it serve your needs?
I've just spent half an hour researching, captioning, describing and keywording an editorial image, pressed 'send' and I've been LOGGED OUT and have it all to do again.
NOT happy.
Aaaah!! It won't help for this time, but next time it happens, try hitting the back button on the browser.. the same thing happened to me the other day and after logging in then hitting 'back' a few times - to my surprise - there was my image almost ready to submit, with all the disambigs and categories maintained. [that was using Chrome on Win7]
72
« on: August 15, 2011, 16:45 »
@SNP
same here, completely shutdown
+1. For me a dismal August so far. July was already poor, but half way through August neither downloads nor $$ are anywhere near half of July's (low) level. It's not looking good.
73
« on: August 15, 2011, 09:26 »
74
« on: August 12, 2011, 09:35 »
Maybe we should include generic search terms which could give local results.
Eg in Spain (and much of the world) results for 'car road' might show more cars driving on the right, whereas in Australia/UK/etc, buyer search behaviour may have made the results skewed towards cars driving on the left.
75
« on: August 12, 2011, 05:18 »
Hi Holgs, good idea - happy to participate too, I'm in the UK. Maybe we should do the test both logged in and logged out to iS. iStock may be interested to see the results too
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