User Generated Content
Scoopshot, the leading mobile platform for photo and video crowdsourcing, has partnered with Pearson. In an effort to reach out and engage millennials, Pearson is using Scoopshot to crowdsource photos from around the world to illustrate its publications.
A new mobile-oriented, crowdsourced photography service called
Twenty20 was launched recently. They claim to have the world’s largest crowdsourced commercial image catalog with 45 million imagers from 250,000 photographers based in 154 countries.
Before reading this colloquy between Paul Melcher and myself the reader should review my story on “
Authentic And Real Images” and all the comments that started our whole conversation. Paul makes some excellent points. To a large extent I agree with his entire analysis. There is about to be some dramatic shifts in the way advertising is delivered. These stories look at some of the implications for photographers.
Alamy has added new features to its successful mobile app Stockimo that was
launched last February. To date more than 180,000 images have been submitted through the app and 99,000 have been accepted for marketing. These images can be found among the almost 53 million images on Alamy.com using the keyword “Stockimo.”
The crowdsourcing site
FOAP has raised a fresh $2.3 million in funding from some interesting names like CNN Worldwide President, Jeff Zucker; CEO and Co-Founder of VaynerMedia, Gary Vaynerchuk; Upshot Chairman and Protagonist LLC Partner, Jordan Rednor; and CEO of Delivery Hero, Niklas Ostberg, among others. The company raised another
$1.5 million in August. Total funding now stands at roughly $5 million but they’re not quite ready to call this a Series A yet.
As image users become more and more reluctant to pay much, if anything, for the images they need compensation for the use of photos may migrate to a barter system.
Robert Henson has provided an important perspective on the Decline of Image Licensing on
Paul Melcher’s blog. He succinctly outlines some of the key changes in the imaging business that will undoubtedly lead to a further price declines. There are also indications that fewer professional produced images will be needed as more and more customers find other ways to acquire the images they need. This is a must read for anyone looking for a future as a stock image producer.
Scoopshot, reports that over 500,000 photographers and videographers from 177 countries contribute images to its service and that more than 70 leading media companies and brands including USA Today, News Corp Australia, Apple Daily, WAZ, Fiat, Finnair, Oxfam and many others use Scoopshot to gain instant access to a global pool of Scoopshooters. In the US, the Scoopshot user base has increased from 14,000 to nearly 50,000 in just six weeks.
In early October 2014 the UK government is expected to change its copyright legislation and introduce an
Extended Collective Licensing (ECL) scheme that will enable collecting societies to authorize use of any image within the UK. Please respond to this survey
(
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ECL-Opt-out) before 12pm 23 June 2014.
Blend Images and
Danita Delimont Stock Photography have recently joined the
IMGembed community. IMGembed went live in March 2013 and currently has millions of images in its collection. Previously, we have reported on
Getty’s embedding strategy and PressFoto’s
ImageRent. IMGembed offers another approach to the pay-per-view strategy for monetizing images.
Peter Krogh has written a disturbing report about how the value of imagery is about to be slashed once again. It’s called The Fire Hose concept. We have reprinted his report with his permission. Peter is also author of the DAM Book (digital asset management) and a group of publications on the use of Lightroom 5. For information about these publications see
here.