Veer's parent company, Corbis, recently purchased a celebrity photo agency called Splash. The Seattle Times ran a story about it on Wednesday. The article wasn't about Veer, but did contain the following lovely paragraph:

"In 2007, it bought a company called Veer that handles content from amateur photographers, a growing business now that so many people carry cellphones that take pictures and video."

This could just be truly sad reporting and editing on the part of the Seattle Times and Melissa Allison, rather than something Veer or Corbis said to them, but what an accomplishment to get both the market for stock photography and the type of contributor completely wrong in just one sentence!

The quotes in the article are from Gary Shenk (Corbis CEO) who had some real doozies from when CrapHamlet SnapVillage was launched in 2007, including from this Seattle PI article, and this in About the Image,  the following gem:

"We're excited about also using SnapVillage as a farm club to find great photographers who can sell their photographs on Corbis"

There are also some wonderful quotes about microstock from him in a 2009 article in the British Journal of Photography, including:

"Shenk, who took over as CEO from Steve Davis in April 2007, doesn't believe microstock is the answer, and has instead been focusing on corporate customers."

"Today microstock represents a small part of Corbis' revenues - less than 1% according to Shenk. 'We give customers a choice, but the vast majority of our revenues come from great photography and rights-clearance,' he says. In fact, over the past three months, Corbis has started to see an overall decline in the growth rate of microstock photography across the market.
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'We believe that editorial and rights-managed photography has the most value,' Shenk continues. 'In the creative segment so much can be recreated by amateur photographers. The key is to focus on stuff that cannot be replicated. The value grows over time.' "

Corbis' negative attitude towards microstock - seeing it only in terms of what it can do for the other parts of their business that they really care about - can't be good for any microstock enterprise under its umbrella. The StockPhotoTalk blog had comments on Shenk's view of microstock growth - thinking he was incorrect about the industry as a whole.

So now I'm off to upload 50 cell phone shots to Veer...

I guess next time I meet Bill Gates I should tell him not to employ fools at Corbis...

snip from jsnover's post:

"Today microstock represents a small part of Corbis' revenues - less than 1% according to Shenk. 'We give customers a choice, but the vast majority of our revenues come from great photography and rights-clearance,' he says. In fact, over the past three months, Corbis has started to see an overall decline in the growth rate of microstock photography across the market.

Well, Corbis might see an overall decline in the growth rate of microstock on Veer because a) it takes months to get anything reviewed and b) lots of best-sellers at other sites get rejected by Veer.

Wonder how many millions Veer has made from us amateur photographers using our cell phones?