Kelly wasn't as bad as some of you hint. Din't have good communication skills, that's true. I think he left istock because he couldn't run it in  his way.

No, he was moved to Getty then shortly after he left Getty to �to pursue other interests�. I believe his fate was controlled by Getty.

As someone who often defended 500px on here, I feel betrayed. What a terrible, terrible move, and what a signal to us contributors.

Also note how representatives of 500px are absent from this discussion when usually they jump in after less than a page of posts. Is that a preview of the coming iStockization of contributor relations?

Makes me sick.

They may be just as surprised as we are, and waiting to see what it means.   It seems like some sort of a "today we're excited to announce" has to be coming pretty soon.  If it isn't really, really positive for photographers - in some specific, concrete ways -  they can deal me out.   

This will either be an opportunity for him to prove the person we saw at IS really wasn't him or it will just validate it really was him.

Or after seeing the negative responses and realizing they just bought a damaged product, 500px may decide to keep him out of the public eye and work as more of an operations role in the background so we never get to see what he has to say.

Really depressing news.

I haven't done microstock in over a year, but recently I started reading posts about 500px and got interested. So I signed up and put up a few photos. And now this.  500px is confusing enough to begin with;  really not interested in spending a lot of time figuring it out and submitting hundreds of photos if it's now in the hands of former IS people, especially someone whose agenda was clearly to beat photographers down to the ground on price, while claiming that customers are really paying for search functionality, not imagery.

we both keeping being on the same page, my friend... (see red line above)
but i held back due to the social-media brigade over there that looks too much like fb.
but yes, i agree, they have good images there..which got me to think this could be the one
i would consider after a long absence with single digit old agencies

going back to Kelly the CEO who preached money is not everything.
y'know, that was yesterday, as some pickup  expert say..."only count what is today. this moment..
when you pick a woman/man up; don't base your approach on what she/he said yesterday or worse 3 months, a year,etc ago".

i like to think this is wise because i have this amazing neighbor who was like Kelly 5 years ago.
today, guess what??? all he cares about is money... and he tells me the same thing flipflop
from the first time we met. ..for him today "money is not everything".

let's wait and see why he moved to 500px.

It's inevitable, we have to reduce royalties to make you more money, just wait for it

Well, people are always remembered for the worst thing they ever said or did, so KT will have to personally coo and kiss 20,000 photographers' babies before we will ever forget "money isn't going to be what make us happy".

Quote from: stockastic on November 22, 2015, 12:49

I don't think this is hard to understand.  A few months ago they brought in tens of millions in venture capital.  After seeing it from the inside, some of the VCs decided they didn't have total confidence in the plan, and wanted a more 'experienced' guy, with the right connections. Or maybe the VCs brought him in along with them, but didn't want it to look that way.  It's a very common scenario, and of course, it's their money; when you go with VCs you surrender a lot of control. 

The original plan is off the table; we'll have to wait to see what the new plan - if any - really is.

It makes sense. If VC's are involved, they want a BIG ROI. That explains Kelly in my mind. He is that resource who will find ways to steal from us to line the pockets of 500PX and their VC's.  This is a VERY IMPORTANT POINT. Venture Capitalists + Kelly = high probability he is there to find ways to pad VC pockets at our expense. I just cannot think of any other way to spin it. That't what Kelly was tasked with doing at IS and what he was good at.

This explains it all as far as I am concerned.  Kelly was tasked with increasing profits by 50% for the VCs who bought Getty and no doubt he will be doing the same for the VCs who invested in 500px.  We've already seen this film, people.  We know how it ends. 

Quote from: Mantis on November 22, 2015, 14:12

Quote from: stockastic on November 22, 2015, 12:49

I don't think this is hard to understand.  A few months ago they brought in tens of millions in venture capital.  After seeing it from the inside, some of the VCs decided they didn't have total confidence in the plan, and wanted a more 'experienced' guy, with the right connections. Or maybe the VCs brought him in along with them, but didn't want it to look that way.  It's a very common scenario, and of course, it's their money; when you go with VCs you surrender a lot of control. 

The original plan is off the table; we'll have to wait to see what the new plan - if any - really is.

It makes sense. If VC's are involved, they want a BIG ROI. That explains Kelly in my mind. He is that resource who will find ways to steal from us to line the pockets of 500PX and their VC's.  This is a VERY IMPORTANT POINT. Venture Capitalists + Kelly = high probability he is there to find ways to pad VC pockets at our expense. I just cannot think of any other way to spin it. That't what Kelly was tasked with doing at IS and what he was good at.

This explains it all as far as I am concerned.  Kelly was tasked with increasing profits by 50% for the VCs who bought Getty and no doubt he will be doing the same for the VCs who invested in 500px.  We've already seen this film, people.  We know how it ends.

Yes it only ends well for a few key insiders. I do not have the stomach to see if the VC's in question have a track record of taking companies they invest in public.

Very interesting article, thank you.

What I don�t really get is the comparison to eyeem. The visual language there is completly different, on eyeem the content has to look amateur and overfiltered to go with the instagram vibe while 500pix has high quality macro style photography,

I also don�t understand why all 55 million community images are considered part of a catalogue if they are not for sale.

Looks like the writer doesn�t know much about the stock industry.

Eyeem does that as well- But that is not the same as having 55 million images on sale, like on getty or Shutterstock.

I can't see any reason to put an image on 500px without putting it in the marketplace.  500px no longer sells prints, so all you can get is comments and 'likes' from other photographers.  Probably the only reason you wouldn't offer a photo for sale is because you couldn't, for example because you don't have the necessary releases; and that's not likely to change even if someone requests to buy the image.  So why do it?   It just sits there in a great big preview, waiting to be stolen.

What is the normal review time for 500pix? Or is it like twenty20 were only a few files are reviewed and the rest only if a customer asks for them?

I thought they have a normal review queue.

China???  yes, it may be impressive to look to China with Alibaba,etc in the Forbes richest rung..
but again, as another wealthy Chinese tycoon once pointed out, "it's also a place where counterfeit rolexes , wine, etc are considered legal".   
good luck in getting any action against someone stealing your photographs and selling them.

Indeed. AliExpress, an arm of Alibaba, is selling costumes of last year's Commonwealth Games copyrighted mascot, using copyrighted photos of the mascot from the games and the CG people have already been over a year unsuccessfully trying to get the costume and the photos removed. (They don't have the vast resources of the Olympics behind them.)
As I've said before, many of my legit sales from Alamy to UK newspapers appear on a plethora of Chinese websites and blogs, who seem to illegally scrape content from the newspapers, before I even know I've had a sale. The response from Alamy is invariably that the uses are illegal and I can pursue them if I want. I unfairly thought for a while that Alamy didn't care about image abuse, but in the last couple of months I've heard of abused being chased up by Alamy and the photographers getting paid, but they don't chase up where they are unlikely to be successful.
I certainly wouldn't cheer about getting exposure in China (hopefully that iS partner scheme has died at birth), even though presumably there are potentially some legitimate buyers there.