The future of photography is exclusive content. Not exclusive as in no one else wants to shoot this, otherwise called “niche” photography. No, no. Niche photography is just exactly that : a specialized market. And with specialized comes limited. When photography was still film, print and slide, no one couldContinue Reading

There is a lot of talk these days that photography has become a commodity. According to Wikipedia, “A commodity is something for which there is demand, but which is supplied without qualitative differentiation across a market. It is a product that is the same no matter who produces it, suchContinue Reading

I was looking at this video of Clay Shirky presentation to TED TV today. It’s a little long ( 17 minutes) but very informative. especially the middle part. What made me thinking is  how he portrays the development of media. If you do not have the time to look atContinue Reading

Web 2.0 and beyond is all about empowering the consumer. It is no longer a viable business to make a product and sell it. These days, you have to let your customers act upon it to make it more personal. Technology allows this and as we have seen with NikeContinue Reading

Who owns the news ? The ongoing debate between news outlets ( AP, NYTimes..) and mash ups ( Google news..)  has made this question surface. Is the first one reporting the news the owner of that news ? That used to be the accepted tradition. Now with Twitter, Facebook, imContinue Reading

  Getty made a huge mistake in blocking Flickr to create its own stock outlet. All they were concerned about was not allowing Flickr to become the biggest commercial stock agency overnight. So they could keep there dominance on distribution. But just imagine, if you will, if Flickr had movedContinue Reading

“In five years? Maybe the only stock businesses are companies that add value by scouring the web for the best work within a genre?.sort of back to photo research services.“ When the great Ellen Boughn speaks, the world of photography listens : read the whole interview here : http://learnaniche.com/blog/2009/04/22/ellen-boughn-and-the-future-of-stock-photography/Continue Reading

“Copyright owners tend to focus on the aspect they see of piracy, which is the lost revenue. They therefore think what drives users to do it is the desire to get something for free. But iTunes shows that people will pay for stuff online, if you make it easy. AContinue Reading

As rumors went, the reality follows. Bill Gates wholly-owned Corbis is closing down its microstock experiment, Snapvillage and merging it into its high value brand, Veer. yes, you are reading it right,  Veer will be the new destination for the corbis microstock offering. Called Veer Marketplace, it will develop intoContinue Reading