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Author Topic: Cancelled my account....  (Read 13052 times)

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« on: February 04, 2008, 02:32 »
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I have just written to Snapvillage to ask them to close my account and delete my images.

Why have I done this?  Well, putting aside the slow web site, terrible upload procedure, inexperienced keywording department and the sheer lack of progress, every time I upload to Snapvillage or even visit their web site I think to myself "why am I doing this?"

I've had my doubts ever since they launched the thing as 'snap'.  It just doesn't sound professional, and I think the microstock market has become professional.  In coming years it will get more professional, and I simply cringe at the thought of an agency referring to my stuff as 'snaps'. I don't like it and it makes me feel uncomfortable.

So I'm outta there.  Snapvillage is not my kinda town.


« Reply #1 on: February 04, 2008, 03:45 »
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Well Hatman, I've just gone the opposite direction, having just joined up recently.

Will see how it goes.
I do agree with you about the name of the site. I too would welcome a much classier name than this.
If they are going to change it, it should be now, before the present one sinks in too much.
Also, the site is horribly slow and this can only get better.
« Last Edit: February 04, 2008, 03:47 by takestock »

« Reply #2 on: February 04, 2008, 05:03 »
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I don't expect anything while it is still a beta site.  They are doing better than Albumo who started arounf the same time.

My hunch is that as they are owned by Bill Gates and have money to spend, they will one day make an impact on the microstock industry.  I might as well have my images there earning a bit of money before the rush to upload happens.  Perhaps I am wrong but the worst that can happen is that I make a few extra $$$.

« Reply #3 on: February 04, 2008, 05:44 »
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I agree with your way of thinking Sharpshot.
No harm in being there and as you say it's still in Beta.

« Reply #4 on: February 04, 2008, 06:00 »
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I've had most of my descriptions changed on my uploads (as well as completely different keywords)

Example: 'tins of process printing inks - cyan, magenta, yellow and black' is now 'cans of paint'. 

« Reply #5 on: February 04, 2008, 06:04 »
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I am with you Sharp. I know they have a business plan and they know what they are doing. I would much rather wait then sell my work for a buck. I mean somebody selling a photo for such a low price is slave labor and a disservice to the industry.

Snap will prevail among the others and soon there will be a contributor queue to upload to them. The cheap photo agency feast have their days counted, a hard working photographer needs to pay their bills.

Snap is willing to recognise this, so I will keep uploading.

« Reply #6 on: February 04, 2008, 06:27 »
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I find it very surprising that they are still in Beta, considering the budget, experience and knowledge  they have.

« Reply #7 on: February 04, 2008, 06:51 »
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No professional designer, magazine or newspaper in the entire world will even be tempted to look at something called snapvillage.  These are professional people and they don't buy snaps.  And they certainly wouldn't want the risk of any of their customers finding out that they'd bought an image from a snap village.

In my view Corbis have attempted to degrade the microstock market by deliberately called it 'snaps'; trying to give the impression that all microstock contributors snap away with a mobile phone.

As they continue to lose large buying customers from their mainstream business to microstock (and microstock develops into midstock as we are seeing with the large price increases) they risk losing those customers NOT to snapvillage but to iStock and others.

Over the last year the registered customer base at iStock has increased from 1.5 million to over 2.7million and none of those are going to even pay a snap village a glancing visit.

If they were serious they would have come to microstock with a bang in order to create a 'sit up and pay attention' impression.  In fact they've come with a web site that is the slowest and lacks any development, and within their first three months were being laughed at as a joke.  They didn't understand the need for IPTC, and they only added a watermark after pressure from contributors.  That is NOT what you do if you want to be a success.

And the Bill Gates thing is just a red herring.  He is a multi billionaire currently involved in a $50 billion bid for Yahoo.  Surely you don't think he's in the slightest bit interested in a two bit photo agency?  He probably doesn't even know it exists.

Good luck to those who decide to stay there, but I will NOT have my work associated with Snapvillage.

« Reply #8 on: February 04, 2008, 07:23 »
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- The eternal beta takes much too long. Many news sites like Geckostock and MostPhotos had their software running in two to four months. Buyers will lose interest. If Bill's own SV can't get things programmed well fast, that tells a lot about Bill.
It took SV months to come up with a decent watermark. I could do that as a kid on my Commodore 64. Maybe Bill can't spare extra money at the moment since he wants to buy Yahoo.

- I wish they would stay away from my keywords. I can't find my images back because some clever editor always removes some essential ones and adds irrelevant ones.

- Every time I go back, I see the view count unchanged at a very low level. Of course, views aren't everything, but in order to be bought, a shot has to be viewed first.

- I'll keep my account there for a while, but only with 3 shots. I deleted the rest after begging for 6 weeks for a watermark, any watermark. Maybe the site takes off, but probably not. Sometimes, miracles happen.

- Hatman makes it sound that CrapHamlet wants to degrade Microstock on purpose. He might be very right. Anything MicroSoft touched meant the kiss of death. MS wants to buy Yahoo and thereby ruin it, like it did with hotmail and everything that it acquired. I hope it won't ruin my beloved Flickr (see however, this blogpost of Dan Heller).
« Last Edit: February 04, 2008, 07:29 by FlemishDreams »

« Reply #9 on: February 04, 2008, 12:43 »
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No professional designer, magazine or newspaper in the entire world will even be tempted to look at something called snapvillage.  These are professional people and they don't buy snaps.  And they certainly wouldn't want the risk of any of their customers finding out that they'd bought an image from a snap village.

I don't agree.  Corbis is a huge site and a lot of their customers will look at SV.  Most of the magazines and newspapers I look at are full of snap shots.  If they buy them from istock, they will buy them from SV.

And the Bill Gates thing is just a red herring.  He is a multi billionaire currently involved in a $50 billion bid for Yahoo.  Surely you don't think he's in the slightest bit interested in a two bit photo agency?  He probably doesn't even know it exists.

Bill Gates must be interested because he owns Corbis and I have read that he wants to sell lower cost images.  If he wasn't interested, SV wouldn't exist.

The $50 bid for yahoo could be positive for SV, there is a lot of yahoo services that might be used to buy cheap images.

istock took years to get to where they are today.  I expect SV will take a couple of years to get going.  There is a huge market for cheap images and a company owned by Bill Gates should have good opportunities to grab some market share in the future.

That is if he doesn't just decide to buy istock :)

« Reply #10 on: February 04, 2008, 13:11 »
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yeah, wasn't it just a few days ago that stockxpert was saying they got som advertising going on the microsoft office programs.. I saw that istock was on there as well.  i imgaine that once snapvillage is actually working, there should be no shortage of advertising funds and channels.

« Reply #11 on: February 04, 2008, 13:33 »
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I just have one image there, and it was really hard to get it through their uploading process, with a lot of its sisters gone God knows where. Not really interested in uploading more at the moment, but I'll keep it there (if it's as difficult to erase it as it was getting it there, I fear I'll be dead before it happens !). The idea is that it doesn't cost me anything but I think when Mr Gates understand (or gets interested by) what he launched, there could be a huge potential. So, wait and see for me. :-\

« Reply #12 on: February 06, 2008, 17:22 »
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Hatman, I have uploaded 40 images to SV and I've had one sale....but I'm not happy with them at all.
I'm not ready to cancel my account with them just yet, but I'm not feeling inclined to upload any more of my portfolio there, mainly because they massacre the descriptions and keywords on my images so drastically that I fear sales potential there is very limited.
They remove all the keywords and add their own, so its pointless to even do your own keywording, and they even edit the descriptions!

And their keyword choices are questionable at best ....

It seems we are not entitled to have any say in how are images are promoted at SV, they know much better than we do how to sell our own product ... I realise that proper keywording is an important issue in microstock, but SnapVillage's approach just doesn't sit right with me.


« Reply #13 on: February 11, 2008, 23:40 »
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Quote
The $50 bid for yahoo could be positive for SV, there is a lot of yahoo services that might be used to buy cheap images
For $50 that is a pretty good deal, maybe I will call up Yahoo tomorrow and ask if I can buy them. Perhaps if this deal goes through Snapvillage will change its name to Yahoo Stock Images or something. I think that is a better sounding name anyway.

« Reply #14 on: February 21, 2008, 15:08 »
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Almost three weeks after my first post I've now managed to get my pictures deleted from SV.

I wrote to them asking them to cancel my account and delete my images and I got a pretty swift reply expressing concern and trying to be helpful.  But I didn't get my images deleted as requested.  Later they said I'd have to manually delete them all myself.  For a while the delete facility wouldn't work so I had to write to them again pointing out that I wouldn't be able to delete my own pictures because that function on the site didn't work, however it them started to work again but was SO slow.

Luckily I found a 'delete complete set' button and as nearly all my stuff was in sets I was eventually able to delete it all.

I'm glad (relieved) to be away from SV.

« Reply #15 on: February 21, 2008, 15:25 »
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hatman, I read on the istock forum that you are going exclusive there, so it isn't just SV you are leaving is it? 

If you were not going exclusive, would you wait for SV to spend money marketing the site and see if they are a success before leaving?  That seems like the sensible option to me.

« Reply #16 on: February 21, 2008, 15:50 »
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Well I blow hot and cold on the exclusive thing sharpshot - one day I'm all keen on the idea, and the next day I get concerned about the 'eggs in basket' risk.

My decision to leave SV has nothing to do with that - I just don't want to be involved there and I don't want them to have my pictures.  In my view they are sloppy, uncommitted, amateurish and possibly incompetent, and I don't want to be associated with what is probably the laughing stock of the microstock industry.

Just my own view, of course.

« Reply #17 on: February 21, 2008, 17:19 »
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I think you could have said all those things about istock when they were less than a year old.  I still feel it is far too early to judge SV.  They need to build a collection and then start marketing.  Sites used to be able to start quickly but now their competitors already have millions of images.  I will give them at least a year to get their act together.

« Reply #18 on: February 21, 2008, 17:50 »
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I'm neither confident in SnapVillage nor writing them off. They have money, and dared to be different. However, they made some obvious mistakes and are still doing many things in very strange ways.

I'll continue watching, but they have a lot to prove before I'll contribute.

« Reply #19 on: February 25, 2008, 07:38 »
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I am also a little confused at the keyword changes, I have a few images of human icons which are definitely people related and they have had the words "nobody"and "no people"added, does anyone know why they do this?

« Reply #20 on: February 25, 2008, 07:47 »
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I do the same thing when I remember.  Nobody is a good descriptive keyword.  It's a good one to search on.  Say you needed a city scene with nobody in it - would you really want to trawl through even city picture that didn't specifically mention it had people in the scene?

More relevant keywords can only be a good thing.

« Reply #21 on: April 15, 2008, 12:57 »
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Almost three weeks after my first post I've now managed to get my pictures deleted from SV.

I wrote to them asking them to cancel my account and delete my images and I got a pretty swift reply expressing concern and trying to be helpful.  But I didn't get my images deleted as requested.  Later they said I'd have to manually delete them all myself.  For a while the delete facility wouldn't work so I had to write to them again pointing out that I wouldn't be able to delete my own pictures because that function on the site didn't work, however it them started to work again but was SO slow.

Luckily I found a 'delete complete set' button and as nearly all my stuff was in sets I was eventually able to delete it all.

I'm glad (relieved) to be away from SV.

Hatman where exactly is that delete set button, because I can not find it.

Thanks

« Reply #22 on: April 15, 2008, 16:44 »
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Can't remember now RMR.  I think you'll see it when you 'view by set'.

« Reply #23 on: April 16, 2008, 01:37 »
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I am also a little confused at the keyword changes, I have a few images of human icons which are definitely people related and they have had the words "nobody"and "no people"added, does anyone know why they do this?

It sounds to me like keywording is being outsourced to some english as a second language workers. This should be a definite point of concern. No one knows your images better than you do, especially for narrow sector subject matter.

« Reply #24 on: April 16, 2008, 11:49 »
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It's the little red [X] that triggers a popup asking if you want to delete the picture/set. Yay everything deleted without having to close my account in case something awsome might happen.



 

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