No official launch yet, but I don't think it's unreasonable for people to be confused, when there hasn't ever been an agency that has started up like this before. Typically, once a call for contributors goes out, that means the site is ready to do business. Seems silly to me to have thousands of images just sitting there for months, but hey, what do I know. Maybe the big contributors are doing ok sales-wise, even without a launch.
Not sure what alternative strategy everyone would have liked to see instead, and as Lisa said it makes sense to build the collection before you try and bring the buyers in.
I think SF is on the right track and is playing this out the right way. Seems no matter what Peter and company do, though, they'll get complaints for it. If they followed the same silly start-up path that other new microstock companies have done lately, they'd be getting complaints for not being typical and doing things the same as everyone else.
I'm not one of the contributors cashing out yet, but I've got $20 in my account so far and I'm not complaining. I say we can't judge SF until the collection hits 1 million images and we see some additional marketing push. If after that the buyers still aren't interested, then maybe the complaints are justified. Until then, I'm happy to see SF doing things a little differently and not trying to follow the same path that countless flash-in-the-pan microstock startups have gone down.