Two months news rolled into one easily managed doobie:
At the Agencies:
The Fotolia website [3] had a makeover, launched a new monthly subscription option and search features including price, category and concept filters.
Depositphotos (re?)launched a campaign [4] looking to attract high volume pro stock photographers with upload incentives (i.e. money) for selected photographers.
Dreamstime announced [5] a new feature to allow contributors to create DMCA takedown notices [6] more easily with a form on their website.
Canstockphoto [7] announced reaching 5 million images, the canstockphoto site also had a makeover, new search and international language sites.
123rf [8] announced it now has 10 million images in their collection, with 100,000 images and illustrations added during the week the 10 millionth image [9] was added.
Cutcaster announced [10] an increase in exclusive commission rates from 1st Sept and a move to a more credit based pricing system inline with other microstock sites while still affording the option to set a price for on-off direct payment download.
Kelly Thompson will be stepping down from his position as head of istockphoto into a new role as Senior Vice President, Product Development for Getty Images. A post on the istock forum [11] has some details and an interesting comparison of istocks grown over the past 6 years. Kelly's post also hints at istock partner resellers/distribution (?). Related post on abouttheimage [12]. iStockphoto also announced that it hired Nicola Ghezzi, as director, country operations in Italy. "Ghezzi will lead iStock’s Milan office and assume responsibility for increasing the company’s presence and mindshare in the Italian market."
Envato launched into microstock with their site photodune [13]. Envato have a history of creating successful user generated content sites like graphicriver and popular blogs aimed at design and creative professionals.
In the Microstock Community
The MicrostockExpo [14] event has been officially announced, aimed at microstock professionals it will take place in Berlin on 5 - 6th November 2011. The conference (to which I have my ticket) offers "unmissable value in education, networking and opportunities, scheduled around three great big parties!". Well known faces from the microstock community and industry are already booked to speak [15] in what looks to be a very interesting program [16].
Things heated up on the microstockgroup pixmac thread [17].
Microstockdiaries took a closer look at the new photodune website [18]
I added mykeyworder.com [19] to a growing list [20] of sites offering keyword suggestion tools.
Tyler Olson posted some thoughts on the new shutterstock trends tool [21].
The picniche blog had a couple of interesting posts including where do independent microstockers submit [22].
Microstockinsider reviews now track basic details of agencies social marketing presence, for the time being it's just agency twitter and facebook accounts [23]; and also which sites offer API access [24] for reselling and image searches. I've also started listing the number of photographers each agency has if they have published that info.
The results of an istock sponsored survey of graphic designers was published, I posted the pertinent results on our facebook page [25], It looks like there is not a lot of customer loyalty going on - it would be interesting to answer the question "Designers use multiple microstock sites".
It's quiet in here!