Shutterstock’s acquisition of 3D marketplace Turbo Squid is significant for a few reasons, some of which might not be obvious. The first and well-understood purchase trigger is that the microstock company is under pressure to expand its offering horizontally. There is a known ceiling to the paid licensed still imagesContinue Reading
Remember Framen? This German startup’s CEO, Dimitri Gärtner, did a Show & Tell presentation at Visual 1st two years ago, showing his company’s digital frame photo viewing solutions. To my surprise, I learned a few days before Christmas that a company no less than Axel Springer had just acquired theContinue Reading
2020 has made screens our primary interface to the world. While pre-pandemic, we were mostly physically interacting with the world, using all of our six senses, the past year has been essentially just visual. Except for our immediate family, it is via a digital representation, text, photos, or video thatContinue Reading
There are three types of fake photos and yet, no real net to catch them. For an industry built on illusion, it is not such a surprise.Continue Reading
For a long time, videos have been heralded as the Next Big Thing, the capture format that was going to replace still photography. But technology disruption often progresses more slowly than one might think. Or much faster than one might think. Or ends up stopping dead in its tracks. So whereContinue Reading
Facebook’s acquisition of the Gif search engine Giphy proves, once again, that whoever controls visual content also controls audiences.Continue Reading
Visual technologies will help flatten the curve today & proactively track health of society.
Many of the technologies that we are depending on today to help us flatten the curve are leveraging cameras and other visual technologies to capture and analyze visual data. These visual technologies can make the difference between life and death for the millions of people who will be infected or exposed to COVID-19 over the course of this pandemic.Continue Reading
It made a giant noise as it caught everyone by surprise — $230 million investment in a company providing photo services. After Adobe’s $800 million purchase of French microstock photo company Fotolia, Pond 5’s $64 million investment and Shutterstock’s $76.5 million IPO, it is the highest figures ever seen investedContinue Reading
Let’s say your company has developed very strong expertise that could be applied to other use cases or markets than those you’ve successfully pursued. That makes it very tempting to expand. However, while some companies do this successfully, a large number of others learn through the school of hard knocksContinue Reading
Depending on who you ask, photo prints are up, or down. Depending on where you look, DSLRs are dead, or not. If you ask VC’s consumer photo apps are out, if you ask developers, they are a hot item. The only certitude, one all seem to agree on is thatContinue Reading