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The End of KPX
March 4, 1997
The Kodak Picture Exchange that showed great initial promise as an on-line
picture database is no more. Kodak sold the service to Sprint about a year
ago but Sprint has done nothing to promote it. Sprint had indicated that
they intended to promote The Picture Exchange as part of their Drums video
server program but that program has been slow to get off the ground.
Stock agencies indicate that while sales of images on KPX got off to a slow
start in 1994 there were fewer sales in 1995 and basically nothing in 1996.
The final blow for most agencies was when Sprint announced their intentions
to charge an on-line storage fee of $1.00 per image for 1997. At that point
most agencies said "sayonara" and severed their business relationship.