Since Getty Images announced that the first 4,280 Flickr images have been added to its collection, there has been quite a bit of speculation about how this will benefit the company.
The rumor was that Getty editors expected to cull through all of Flickr and invite the creators of about 100,000 individual pictures to be part of the Flickr Collection. Getty expected about 20% of those contacted to respond to the invitation, hoping to get 4,000 to 5,000 images that met all of the company’s requirements. It appears that Getty accomplished this goal.
While this is likely to be good for the selected photographers, who they were not earning anything from the selected images before, there are some that speculate that this collection will have little effect on Getty’s bottom line. So why go to all the trouble? Certainly, creating the collection cost Getty a lot in editor time and distracted those editors from working with the more experienced photographers, who are already in Getty’s stable and producing saleable images.
Those who think along these lines should remember that the minute Getty signed the contract with Flickr, the stock-licensing company had a big win. It locked Flickr out of setting up its own site to sell images at microstock prices, which Flickr had been contemplating. Getty also kept its competitors from potentially working some type of a deal with Flickr. The move was much more about eliminating competition than growing revenue.