How Fotolia Missed An Opportunity

An interesting microstock development happened earlier this week, concerning an iStockphoto competitor.

Finding Your Images “Out There”

A lot of stock photo contributors are interested in finding their work “out there” being used.  For quite a while now, it’s been easy to use a website called TinEye to try and find a certain image being used on the internet.  In fact, back a while, I wrote about how buyers could use TinEye to brainstorm in their work process.  TinEye is kind of like a google search, but for images.  Well, yesterday, Google revealed their new product which is actually a Google search, but for images.  And it’s easy to use (and addicting).

iStockphoto to Add Getty Editorial Content

In case you missed the announcement on Monday, iStockphoto will be adding celebrity and location editorial content from Getty Images proper, to compliment the existing iStockphoto editorial offering:

Our product shots are already a great success for us. What we’re quickly learning is that we need a much more complete offering to truly be competitive in the editorial space. In order to attract more of the non-creative users like media, publishers and bloggers, and properly assert ourselves in this marketplace, we need to add more traditional editorial content.

On June 9th we are planning to add a collection of news, location and entertainment images from Getty Images photographers. You’re going to see unreleased images of famous people and iconic locations on iStock for the first time ever. By adding this content we hope to draw more attention from traditional consumers of editorial imagery.

Needless to say, this announcement was met by less than great enthusiasm from most iStockphoto contributors who view this as yet another incursion upon the content collection they helped grow and build.  Some, however, feel that it will draw new buyers looking for content not allowed in the iStockphoto regular editorial collection ( content, which iStockphoto doesn’t allow in by its contributors, not that contributors aren’t offering it ).

No word on pricing yet.

iStock News This Week

All’s been quiet on the iStockphoto front lately, as far as buyers are concerned.  Thus, not to much to report on to you.  There are a couple of new things that surfaced yesterday, though.

iStock Adds Video and Illustrations to Vetta

iStockphoto yesterday announced that sometime this Spring 2011, video and illustration content will be added to the higher priced, more stylized “Vetta Collection” on the site.

Vetta has been a huge success for iStock photographers. Now we’re getting ready to expand the collection to include Vector and Video artists.

iStock Editorial Goes Live

The new iStockphoto “Editorial Use Only” collection has gone live with 7,000 images:

Just a few weeks ago, iStockphoto started accepting images for a new Editorial Use Only license. We have accepted thousands of these images in a very short time and we’re happy to announce that they are now available for download.

iStock 2011 Pricing Changes

Normally, in January, iStockphoto adjusts its image prices, either by changing per credit prices, or by modifying the credits needed for a certain item/size.  I thought we were going to make it into 2011 without a price change, but apparently they’ve decided to announce one, after yesterday’s hardware upgrade.

Changes to iStockphoto Royalties

Well, I’m sure by now that you heard about or read the bomb dropped at iStockphoto yesterday that no one (well, most people) had any idea was coming.  If not, read the first post in the link there, and let’s first take a look at how this will affect buyers.