At the end of 2007, a company with a chewing name, came out with a product that, at the time, made little noise. They had spent some time looking at the online photo licensing space and thought the system was upside down. Their idea was that, instead of delivering aContinue Reading
News emerged today that Google is hard at work on a new, somewhat secret bookmarking service. According to Florian Kiersch, a German student who enjoys trawling Google code, the new Chrome feature still being developed will replace Google collections and will be called Google Stars. Google Stars promises to not justContinue Reading
It didn’t last long. Less than a week after Dropbox and Twitter announced new photo oriented features, the other major players responded. Loud and clear. Google bets on Email First Google. Today, it announced a tighter integration of its very popular Gmail with it’s photo backup solution Google Photo album.Continue Reading
The world of professional photography has been scratching its head trying to figure out why so many casual photographers are having as much success, if not more, than they are. After all, on one side you have experience, adequate equipment, preparation, knowledge and on the other, well,Continue Reading
The traditional image licensing business is a transactional one. Historically, the management of rights was considered to be an ongoing service, but with royalty free models eclipsing rights managed volumes, this is of little to no value for today’s image buyer. All value is wrapped up in the transaction: image rightsContinue Reading
It was just a question of time. We have repeatedly wrote here about how the current photo licensing model is broken and obsolete. We also explained at full length how image data collection and third-party revenue are the new gold mine. Getty apparently heard and isContinue Reading
The next frontier in digital revenue is the yet untapped landscape of the millions of photographs uploaded and shared everyday. Photographs are considered by many to represent more than 75% of the internet real estate, yet no one has yet successfully cracked its full revenue potential. With almost unlimited resources,Continue Reading
Today, or yesterday, Google made a little change to its image search engine that could have great consequences. Apparently responding to a blog post by Lessing – the leading advocate for a copyright free world- who was complaining that Bing Images search offered better functionality, Google decided to move theContinue Reading
During this period of the year, like many of us that write about photography, I receive many well wishes from a wide variety of photographers, photo galleries, photo agencies and pretty much anyone involved in the photography business. They all come via email mostly from people I have never communicatedContinue Reading
Publications are no longer the place where photography is consumed, social media is. The so called professional market has become an infinitesimal portion of the marketplace. The big Internet companies have understood it and are waging a take no prisoners battle to control it. They want it all. They wantContinue Reading