The more I look at this, the more I see Flickr - they even have a little "beta" above their name.

Hmm,

I start to like this site, and one reason is the prices and second, in fact, you do not need to keyword your files, they do it for you! But you are allowed to.


And I found this in the FAQ:

"Can I create my own titles & keywords?
Sure! You�re welcome to upload titles and keywords, but you don�t have to. We know that most of our photographers would rather be out taking pictures than sitting in front of a computer filing out forms � so we are willing to do the work for you."

If every agency would do that.. we really would have more time for photography...
Massuploading will be available soon too aparently.

I also found a blog of them:
http://blog.snapvillage.com/

No categories, no titles, no keywords. Great idea, I love Bill

I had a chat with a marketing guy at Corbis / SnapVillage this morning. Here's some of the responses he gave to my questions and some of your questions that I put to him:

Empty database. Yes, they didn't put any Corbis images in because the 'spirit' of SnapVillage is user generated.

The word "snap" is very deliberate. Yes, it's associated with "snap-happy", "snapshots", etc, but it has multiple interpretations. They are creating a "fun" and "quick" brand, and the name conveys the "openness" of their model.

Yes, they will keyword and describe for you. Yes, they realise this a lot of extra work for them. They see it as a test of how good their processes are! 

Here's the message they pushed across to me:

They're very interested in feedback from the market. They're open to changing many things if they get the right feedback.

This is "content collection mode" for them. They have a lot of extra funtionality almost ready, and they promise to continually post updates about upcoming functionality on their blog.

Freezing, don't think he's not here. Don't think that of any of them!


I should have added my opinion too.

I don't think they've got the mix right to attract contributors. Sure, it's great to set the price of your own images, but:
1. that's undermined by the subscription (thankfully subscription is optional)
2. it's not that different from LO sideshow or FT price setting options
3. there's no incentives to get them over the critical mass hump. Fotolia paid contributors and LuckyOliver gave out "tokens" and higher commissions.
4. there's no buyers, won't be for a long time, and they can only come from the US portion of the market.

I expect we'll see a lot of changes in the strategy over at SnapVillage before long. They've done a great job (compared to some of the other latecomers) and have the brand and marketing budget to see it through. Regardless of how many combinations they need to try.

I'm sure they'll have plenty content when the UPS parcels of dvds arrive there from iofoto, yuri, andresr etc!
]\[*--

I'm sure they'll have plenty content when the UPS parcels of dvds arrive there from iofoto, yuri, andresr etc!
]\[*--

hehe..you got that right.

On another note...I like the image of the little girl on the front page. I'm really tired of all the perfect perfectness. Looking through my latest European image magazine 'Chasseur d' Images' there are award winning images that wouldn't make it onto the top micro-stock sites except maybe 1 but they would * sure sell as stock and probably will for large amounts of money.
The little girls image is not of the quality I'm speaking of but there's nothing wrong with it accept everyone is getting conditioned to no noise, no artifacts, perfect white balance etc. etc. It's boring. Since most of these images are bought in small version and any PS user can manipulate the contrast etc. it's a worthy stock shot. I wish it were mine.

Well I sent them another five and woke this morning to find acceptance emails for all ten initial images.  Checked the site; disappointed by several things; firstly because it wouldn't take IPTC I left them to do keywords etc and descriptions, just to see what would happen.

My pictures have keywords but no descriptions.  Also, their choice of category is disturbing.

For instance a high quality set up of an executive person writing with a ballpoint pen has no description at all.  For keywords they've used only six, the main ones being 'man, holding, pen' (doh).  Lastly, this is a deliberate business image; I dressed the man in a blue and white typical striped executive shirt, and he is writing with an expensive pen - this is clearly a business image, but they have chosen to place it only in the 'isolated on white' category.

The ten images I sent were all studio set ups and probably represent more than thirty hours' work on my part and I am certainly not going to have them left with no descriptions, few keywords and wrong categories.  So I'll delete them and wait until SV get their act together.

Lastly, these are not 'snaps' but carefully crafted stock images - I'm uncomfortable with the whole 'snap' idea; that isn't how I want to portray myself.

I only have two comments....about the name?
And you all think Lucky Oliver is a name that applies to photography....outside the little microstock circle?
I think snapvillage is a cool and catchy name.

Second, as mentioned above about white balance, noise and all that other stuff.....it is only micro stock that is so hung up on it....and not all the sites are. Istock and Dreamstime, I find care more about the image than the technical aspects....I find it amusing how if an image isn't a perfectly lit sunny day some of the sites will say it is has bad lighting, yet you look in any magazine and the majority of the great photography you find there would never make it past the reviewers.....

ok off i go to play with my camera some more.....

ps does it matter if corbis makes a profit as long as the photographers get paid?
I dont think so.....

again these are just my opinions.....

toodles!
S

seems to me they need to beef up their watermarking - anyone can come along and get fairly large images for nothing and very little editing (other than cropping out the top of the image).

I worry about the keywording here. They need a lot of photos, and there's no way they can add quality keywords for all of them. On the other hand, as long as they don't read IPTC data (why on earth don't they do that?), there's no way that I will manually keyword all my photos either. Something needs to change.

Apple doesn't apply to computers
Orange doesn't apply to mobile phones
Virgin ..........

I only have two comments....about the name?
And you all think Lucky Oliver is a name that applies to photography....outside the little microstock circle?

If you start uploading and come back later you are logged out and you have to start uploading again, because only if you finish the submission at that time will then system remember/retain your pics. Very frustrating. Uggghhhh.

Well... I've tried uploading pics twice now without sucess. The second time I only tried 3 pics and after 30 mins of "uploading..." I logged out. There doesn't even seem to be a place to see what pics were uploaded.... and without IPTC data and their bad keywording... I'm gonna wait. Beta... right....

I think everyone should boycott the site until they get FTP and IPTC reading on line.

By all means reserve you username but dont upload.  This is the approach I am taking.