Stock image site
BrightQube has won the 2008 FITC People's Choice Award. According to Sharon Tczap, BrightQube vice president of marketing, the company's increasing momentum in the stock-licensing industry is the result of its user-centric philosophy.
FITC is a Canadian company that produces international design and technology events for new-media designers and developers. Its flagship event, FITC Toronto: The Design & Technology Festival, is among the largest of its kind and is complemented by similar events in Amsterdam, Chicago, and Hollywood, as well as by FITC Road Shows.
FITC founder and director Shawn Pucknell said that People's Choice is one of the most prestigious honors of the company's annual awards show. This year, users voted BrightQube the top site among some 50 nominations.
"We are really listening to our customers and using their feedback to make our site as easy to use as possible," said Tczap. At the core of BrightQube's business model is addressing the top image-buyer complaint: the time it takes to source images due to having to load dozens of individual Web pages before making a selection. Unlike other sites, BrightQube's Dynamic Mosaic technology presents the equivalent of 60 search-result pages of content on the same page. The same page also allows image-zooming and purchasing.
Tczap added that BrightQube remains alone in representing both micro-priced and traditional royalty-free imagery at the same location, further easing the image-search process by eliminating the need to visit several suppliers. Since its launch last fall, BrightQube has amassed an inventory of over 3 million images from over 40 brands, and the library continues to grow.
In addition, Tczap gave Selling Stock an exclusive preview of another upcoming development designed to simplify online image purchasing. This week, BrightQube launches a credits-based payment system, similar to that used by microstock companies.
Designed for high-volume and microstock buyers, the pre-paid "Top-Up" payment option will allow customers to add credits to their BrightQube account. Other available options include credit cards, PayPal and corporate accounts, which are invoiced monthly. "The addition of the Top-Up option makes us the online image source with the most complete range of payment choices available in the stock photography industry," said Tczap.
BrightQube's Dynamic Mozaic has been widely publicized, with industry experts acknowledging both its concept and the underlying technology as groundbreaking developments in image licensing. While it is too early for suppliers to compare BrightQube-generated revenues to those of others, the company just secured another round of financing to support its planned expansion.