The New York-based micro-payment Web site Fotolia announced that it has passed the 3-million-image mark. At midday on Tuesday, the Fotolia home page advertised 3,010,147 stock images.
Since its launch in November 2005, Fotolia has become one of the top companies in its niche. The company says it has over 500,000 buyers and 80,000 professional and amateur contributors. Chad Bridwell, director of U.S. operations at Fotolia, contends the site is growing at the rate of 40,000 new images per week, "and the customers keep coming." To encourage even more submissions, Bridwell announced an image contest that will reward the person with the largest number of accepted images within the next 34 days with 3,000 credits.
Yet this success has not been without controversy, particularly last year's debate over the number of images in Fotolia's inventory.
The Web site claimed a lead over iStockphoto and ShutterStock when it announced surpassing the 1-million-image mark in summer 2006. A year later, the company advertised 3.3 million images on its home page. However, searches for common subjects returned significantly fewer results at Fotolia than at the Web sites of its top two competitors, causing concern among microstock photographers and company reps.
At the launch of Fotolia V2 last summer, the site adjusted the number on its home page, reducing it by over 30% to 1.9 million images. Though management offered explanations related to returning only a portion of search results to limit the server load, many in the industry have remained skeptical.