Since Getty Images finalized its acquisition of Jupiterimages in February, traditional and microstock industry insiders have been waiting to see how the leader will integrate former Jupiter brands. This week saw another step in this relatively quiet process: iStockphoto announced that it took over management of the Internet’s leading free image Web site Stock.xchng.
Thus far, Getty has added the words “a Getty Images company” to the footer of Jupiterimages.com and announced its intent to discontinue rights-managed sales through that domain as of August 1. All other publicly known integration activities seem to have fallen to iStock and its energetic COO Kelly Thompson, who has assumed the near-impossible task of balancing an open and highly vocal microstock community with its newly private and traditionally somewhat secretive parent company.
The first attempt at consolidation took place in April, when Thompson announced the plan of augmenting the inventories of Photos.com and Jupiterimages Unlimited with some iStock content, to be offered on a subscription basis. Following a substantially less-than-warm reception by iStock contributors, Thompson’s team spent a couple of months revising the original plan and announced a new program in June, stating that Photos.com has become a “powered by iStock” Web site.
Originally launched in 2001, Stock.xchng is also coming under the iStock umbrella. The site is now hosted in Calgary, but Thompson says that no other major changes are in plans. Getty and iStock plan to keep Stock.xchng free and “make it better by getting even more better-quality images,” he explains.
The goal? Upselling, of course. According to Thompson, “free photo sites are a great marketing vehicle.” He sees the combination of the Internet’s top free image property and top microstock as a win-win for Getty. Thompson said Stock.xchng is currently experiencing an upsurge in traffic as a result of this week’s announcement—and every Stock.xchng page now connects to iStock via a link similar to those that promote Getty’s premium collection on the search-return pages of istockphoto.com.
What is interesting is that there have been no public developments on StockXpert, the top-six microstock originally developed by the same Hungarian company as Stock.xchng, HAAP Media. Jupiterimages had made a 49.7% equity investment in HAAP in January 2006 and raised it to a controlling 90% by the end of that year. Thompson confirmed that Getty’s ownership of Stock.xchng remains at 90% but has consistently declined to comment on the company’s plans for the larger microstock asset.
As of today, StockXpert’s Web site remains branded as copyright HAAP Media Ltd, a subsidiary of Jupiterimages. The site’s future remains a subject of hot debate on online contributor forums, with some using descriptors like “ghost town,” while others have not noticed a change. The fact that iStock had made a soft, no-incentive migration offer to StockXpert contributors has led some to believe that the former Jupiter microstock has no future. Micro shooter Robert Gebbie may well have it right: “StockXpert content is the same as all the other micros. And, frankly, that just won’t do for Getty.” If so, whatever ownership StockXpert creators retained in the company may soon not be worth very much.