Image Oversupply: The Real Number

Posted on 6/2/2010 by Jim Pickerell | Printable Version | Comments (1)

What does the competition look like in terms of the number of images available online? Everyone knows there are billions of amateur images floating around the Internet, but what is the quantity of unique images currently available in professional collections?

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Comments

Paul Melcher Posted Jun 2, 2010
I believe you a counting some images twice, if not more. Newscom has images from Getty and Reuters, for example. Getty also represent Bloomberg, and Corbis has or used to have Reuters content.
Furthermore, a lot of microstock site use number of images as a calling card in order to attract buyers looking for choice. Are they numbers correct ? Also, as you say, most images are the same on these microstock site. It has been estimated that it is in the magnitude of 90%, thus highly reducing the total number.
Finally, what is the point ? That there is already too many images and that we should quit ? Or not enough? Can we ever estimate the amount of images needed. Just on the internet, it must be billions, if not more. isn't the issue here that these 130 million images are offered to the same reduced market ?

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