iStockphoto announced today that it has been acquired by Getty Images. This is just super cool news. I LOVE iStockphoto. Most of my blog entries has an iStockphoto photo in it–unless I took a picture of a laptop. :-)
Did you ever wonder how I get a picture of a man sitting on a toilet? Or a woman standing up and peeing? Or a gorilla whacking his head? Or a bottle of champagne? iStockphoto, baby. I write my entry and at the very end, I go to iStockphoto, find a picture, and add it to the entry.
Hmm, as a contributor and user of iStockPhoto I am heartbroken by this announcement. I can only imagine that prices will skyrocket; what else could Getty possibly have planned? I guess most of the small businesses I work with will get back to using bad graphics.
Also, it would have been nice, since I have photos on iStockPhoto and $54 in my account, to get an announcement about this development.
I’m not sure how you see this as a positive development. Can you elaborate? Is this only because you are an “Advisor” to iStock, or do you have other insights into the deal?
How many more people are going to click on the “woman standing up peeing” link than the “man sitting on a toilet” link? Do you have any way to track which links get clicked on?
Another great place is Stock.XCHNG, at www.sxc.hu, where you can find great free photos of all kinds.
I fail to see how this is *good* news since large corporate buyouts rarely result in better customer and/or user experience.
Large image stock houses in particular have horrible reputations for outlandish business tactics. Including, but not limited to: striking exclusive digital rights to famous paintings, buying dozens of small stock houses to the point where only 3 major companies exist, and lobbying for the DMCA instead of adjusting to the internet era.
This is absolutely the best thing that could have happened for the community. Getty Images is number 1 in the image space. They’re committed to maintaining the culture and community at iStockphoto. In fact, we’re working together to make it better.
Patrick Lor
EVP, iStockphoto.com
(Nick – BTW: we abhore spam. So, if you had your preferences to receive emails from us, you would have seen something from us)
I just signed up for StockPhoto. Much to my surprise the “Where did you hear about us?”, in addition to “Google”, “a Friend”, and so on, contained an option for “Guy Kawasaki”. First time ever I’ve seen a single person listed like that in a sign up form.
yeah I’m with you Nick.
been using the wonderful iStockPhoto for a couple of years now & I do suspect that it’ll get a) more expensive and b) worse/harder to use.
but I’ll give the big boys a chance to impress…. my mind is open!
I believed Garage.com invested into this company.
http://www.istockphoto.com/partners.php
I love iStockphoto.com!
For many of my sites and designs I use them along with Stock Xchange as mentioned as well.
Hopefully things stay the same while getting better :)
Patrick:
I received the Contact Sheet email at 6:40 PM Central, after I read Guy’s blog post.
Luckily, the world is flat, and should iStock go wrong, the same system is only a few thousand dollars away for my offshore developers.
Nick,
If you’re talking about competitors, have you searched the net? We are the first, biggest and best stock photo community in the world. We created our competition. Search “iStockphoto” on Google and you’ll see our competitors buying our trademarked brand as adwords. Then check Alexa.com and see how it all stacks up.
In general, as business guys, it is our duty to embrace competition – it forces us to do a better job. If we follow all of Guy’s rules, we’ll do fine.
Creative One,
Garage and I do not own any iStockphoto stock.
I wish we did, though.
Guy
Aren’t you on their board of directors, Guy? I’ve used Getty Images for quite a while, and love it. Never really used iStockphoto. iStock is certainly much cheaper. I’m going to register.
Nope, I’m not on iStockphoto’s board.
Guy
The catch is, will iStockphoto lose its cool vibe now? Not to mention affordability. It has been my “go to” source for affordable, quality pix for the past year or so. Now will my clients have to pay $149 rather than $1 per photo?
I’ve been involved with iStock in a lot of ways for several years and I agree that this is going to be what takes iStock to the next level.
It is the easy path to give in to fear and negativity, but if the folks of iStock had that kind of mentality they would never have gotten iStock off the ground.
The next chapter has yet to be written and I’m excited to be a part of it in some small way.
It’s nice for the people who built iStock – they can cash out and they’ve earned it by building a great little business. For the iStock community of customers and contributors I am afraid it will be a big loss. iStock was an alternative to the big, expensive, corporate image houses. You can absolutely guarantee that prices are headed way up along with a big push to upsell customers to Getty’s main library. Oh well, I’m sure there are other iStocks out there
First Wayne and the gambling and now Guy endorsing this? What next!?!
I fail to see how anyone can be optimistic about this development. Surely, Getty didn’t enter into the deal to further reinforce the great community feeling that istock has tried to maintain.
But to be honest, I soon as I saw an ad for istock in Communications Arts, it seemed inevitable that change was coming.
istock rocks. Kudos to them.
Guys,
May I suggest that we slide iStockphoto a break? We don’t “know” what will happen. My analysis is that Getty wants a lower price point option to its professional-level photo offerings that go for hundred of dollars per image.
Let’s say that the Ritz Carlton buys Motel 6. Does this mean it’s going to jack up rates to $300/day? Then why would it buy Motel 6? To kill it? Maybe it wants to have a broader lineup of product offerings.
Someday, I hope that we’re all in the position that after slaving away for years, eating soy sauce and rice, and working in a warehouse type office on crappy desks that a big company wants to buy our company and make us rich.
Then let’s see who would turn them down. Also, if you turn them down, please send me an email about how you explained this decision to your shareholders and spouses. :-)
I suggest an alternate perspective:
– Reserve judgement until something really bad happens. Things may stay the same or get even better. For example, maybe a whole new population of photographers start uploading their work to iStockphoto so the collection gets even better.
– Celebrate this event. This is a great story for every tech entrepreneur because it proves that a couple of guys with a cool idea, and lots of work without a nickle of venture capital (ergo, less dilution) in Alberta (ergo, Silicon Valley doesn’t have a monopoly on entrepreneurs with good ideas). It can’t get better than this, eh? This should give hope to every one of us.
Guy
It seems like there is a trend going on here with photos…..flickr,film loop, riya, and etc. I don’t really know what’s stirring in the photos sector, but i can feel that something big is going to happen in the photos sharing arena. I don’t understand why people need to share photos now….but not back in the dot-com era. I really want to know what’s driving this need?
iStock, where people who don’t value their work sell to people who don’t value photography.
Essentially, their whole business is built on a “community” that encourages people to supply their work for essentially nothing. Now, thanks to that, their founder walks away with $50 million.
There are so many untapped markets. We can’t sell our media to those markets because of obvious reasons, ie: language barriers and lack of cultural understanding. Hopefully Getty will invest some financial muscle into those markets. I can imagine there is a huge demand for our reasonably priced images in places like China and India. At the same time, we will see the proliferation of the true, *natural* market value of the media (hence why prices have gone up over the years).
As someone who knows some of the people at iStockphoto all i can say is that this couldn’t have happened to a nicer and more deserving bunch of people.
One can argue about the devaluation of photography but the truth is they have built a strong online community and given a slew of photographers that may not have otherwise, the abiity to make some money and maybe a living off their work.
This is a great example of a good idea, well executed that is profitable. It bodes well for the future of the internet that real companies with real potential make real advances.
thank god the days of justballs.com are over.
Warren
I can’t say I wasn’t surprised/concerned at first with the news of “Istock was just bought by…” but the more I think about it, I think it’s a great move in the right direction. First of all Getty is a huge name and the Istockphoto team wouldn’t have agreed to this if it weren’t in the best interests for all parties. They built it and they created it, why wouldn’t they want only the best things for it?! :) Not sure what the future holds, but I’m sure it’ll be awesome!!
Warren, would you feel the same way if we were talking about the devaluation of the web design industry? I find it ironic that a group of people who make a living in an artistic endeavor, providing a service to people and billing a–presumably–reasonable amount for it are wringing their hands over the notion that they may have to pay more than $1/image, of which the creator gets to keep a whopping 20%.
The “genius” of iStock was in the cultural engineering involved in convincing the suppliers that that’s a good thing. And of course you consumers love it because you pay peanuts for an important element of your work while in turn billing clients as usual.
Let the good times roll, indeed.
Mark, I would say that the web design industry is always under attack of devaluation.
Myself and my company still to this day have to deal with the pricing of the “13 year old nephew who builds websites”.
It use to make me angry that some people didn’t see that big a difference in the value of what we do vs. what they could do.
I’m come to terms with the reality that there are people that are going to see the value in what we do (as people will still want to work with professional protographers) and other that will be just as happy with the kid in his basement.
All I know is they paid 50 mils for it – which is a lot of a bunch of contact infos.
I don’t know if they will sky rocket the prices at first but for sure if I’d be a photographer that would have contract with Getty I wouldn’t like much the fact that almost same quality pictures with mine are selling for one buck so I’d ask Getty to do something about it. I can be wrong since I don’t know how Getty operates but my feeling is that they will try to “promote” the best shots to Getty…
As I said I can be wrong…
I agree with Nick Davis. I used to buy four to eight Photodiscs per year. After Getty bought Photodisc, their price more than doubled ($299 to $649) for fewer photos (100 down to 25 to 50).
Getty now has a subscription service that costs $2000 per year for larger photos. Contrast that with photos.com who charge $600 per year.
All that I can see is that Getty has been buying out its competitors and raising their prices. Is that really what you want to happen to iStockPhoto?
I’ve been a contributing artist at iStockphoto since 2002 and an active member of the community. It’s easy for outsiders to be sceptical about this deal but I have complete faith in Bruce and his team. He has always been honest and upfront with me and the rest of the community and I have never had a reason to doubt him.
There are many people on iStock who make a substantial percentage of their income from their royalties. Bruce knows this and he is not the sort of person who would never put that in jeapody.
It has now been a month since the sale to Getty and the only change I have noticed is a increase in sales of about 20%.
I see this as the next step for iStock and I’m proud to be part of this eveolution.
istockphoto.com and the Art of the Start
After my last post, I went and checked my copy of Guy Kawasaki’s Art of the Start (one of my must reads in the sidebar). The brilliant thing Guy did was offer a contest to create the cover of the
>>Reserve judgement until something really bad happens. Things may stay the same or get even better. For example, maybe a whole new population of photographers start uploading their work to iStockphoto so the collection gets even better.
OK, so now it is June 2007, and prices just went up again. One year ago I could buy a large photo for $3, without any kind of credit discount. That same photo is now $7.20 without credit discounts.
There were 2 distinct price changes: 1) they increased the number of credits required to purchase a large photo, and 2) they raised the prices of credits.
A small photo used to be $1, now it’s $2.40. Wow.
I’m looking for a new source.