05 yahoo flickr nyc 012214 530pm group 1 high buyers

Project Name: Yahoo FlickrLocation: New YorkDate: 1/22/14Time: 5:30pmSegment: Group 1

How is everyone today?

Good. How are you?

Good. I think it’s [INAUDIBLE] outside, but it will be fun just to [INAUDIBLE]. Thank you all for spending your Wednesday, snowy—not so snowy, but snow is subtle, cold evening with me. My name is Angela. I’ll be moderating, and we’ll be here for about two hours together, but trust me, the time will fly, because it’s been going by fast for all the other groups that we’ve been doing these groups in San Francisco and now we’re here in New York. Very exciting. Has anyone done a focus group before? Three of you? Great. You kind of know the drill, but let me tell you what this room is all about, for the others. We have microphones and we’re recording the session, and the reason why we’re recording is so I’m not scrambling and taking notes. I can actually just talk to you and enjoy our conversation. Then, also, we have a two-way mirror here, because I have colleagues here in the back room who are listening in. They’re also interested in your opinions and what you have to share today. I’ll be checking back with them, if they have any additional questions or comments here and there. We’ll spend two hours and we’ll be talking about what you’ve been predicting, photo stock, talking about some of the experiences you have, since you’re so close with it. You’re purchasing photo stock all the time. Then I’m going to share a new product idea with you. One thing that’s really important is that we’ve recruited you because you’re all different. You’re all buying photo stock, but you all have different professions, you’re all doing different things, so there might be moments where you agree, there might be moments where you disagree, and that’s good. We actually want your most honest feedback. If there’s a moment where we’re not all on the same page, that’s totally fine. Your most honest feedback is the best. And this is the one place that you could just say everything that’s on your mind. I have a lot to cover, so you might see me steering the conversation one way or the other,

05 Yahoo Flickr NYC 012214 530pm Group 1 2

just because of the things that we have to get through, but other than that, your honest feedback is what we love. Yes. Anything else is just—I’m thinking bathroom. If you have to go to the bathroom, I just ask that you go one at a time, because sometimes everybody goes at the same time and we lose half our group. If you could go one at a time. I think Jerry’s going to bring in some water, in case you guys get thirsty. That’s really it. Any questions for me before we get going? Since we’re going to be together for two hours, I think it would be great for us to get to know each other a little bit before we go into the whole photo stock discussion. If we could go around, you can introduce yourself. Tell us your living situation, what you do for a living, and why you buy photo stock.

I’ll start. I’m a freelance graphic designer, and I buy photo stock mostly for work, pretty much exclusively for work. That’s about it.

What part of New York are you in?

Brooklyn.

Oh, great.

Ditmas Park.

[INAUDIBLE] so fun. I’m from Michigan but living in LA right now.

Just visiting?

Yeah. Savio.

My name is Savio. I live in Westchester County, but I work in Atlantic City. I live in a single-family home by myself. Single. I’m a senior web producer, so I buy photo stock for clients and more work-related purposes, but I also have creative pursuits, so I like to buy some photo stock for that, as well.

What creative pursuits?

I just like, really, using iMovie and some little videos. I like—I have a tumblr account and a Twitter account, I have a Pinterest account, so I just like to pinboard. Travel is a really big thing for me. Planning a trip


to Europe in about two months. Trying to get together a lot of [INAUDIBLE].

Steve.

Hi, I’m Steve. I am a freelance television producer. I primarily buy stock for both still photography and for video for various clients. Right now I’m doing some perma-lance with a company that specializes in putting together packaged news stories. We do both print campaigns and video campaigns. I spent a couple years in commercial advertising, as well, and I’ve worked purchasing stock photos and stock video for those types of campaigns, as well. Married and live in Hoboken.

Neat. Welcome, Steve.

Hi. I’m Freddie. I’m from West Chester, also. Married with two children, one that lives with me, the other one is in college. I’ve been a photo editor for 18 years, eight of those working for web. I am now a multimedia producer [INAUDIBLE]. Now I work also in video; I’m producing and editing video. I buy stock mostly for my photography clients. When I’m working for a client, a particular editorial client, and now for video, too. If I have to purchase imagery to use in video, I’d rather something from stock.

I’m Amy. I’m a freelance graphic designer. I just live a few blocks away. [CROSSALK]. Just a small walk. I almost fell, but that’s OK. I work almost exclusively for the medical industry, so I work for hospitals, medical publishers, universities for their medical departments, and I buy a lot of stock photos. Catalogues, I’ll buy 40 images at once. It’s crazy how many images I have to buy.

Oh, Gosh. I can’t wait to hear all your stories.

You probably get good deals.

Medical textbooks. I work for a psychiatrist at the NYU, but I get—I asked if he thought I needed his help and he said, “No,” so I’m good. [LAUGHTER].

Adam. Live in Manhattan. Work on Wall Street. I’m the multimedia editor for a major financial media company. We do all of our photo stock and editorial photos for a print editorial, video editorial, social


media, and our premium services division, so we have a hefty amount of subscriptions to various photo organizations across the board.

Welcome everybody. This is a wonderful array of professions and such. This is fantastic. If you guys were to summarize what types of projects are the big ones that require you to do purchase photo stock—which you kind of touched on, but just to hear everyone. What projects require you to buy.

Large amounts?

Yes.

Photo galleries, in my case. I have to build photo gallery for something, an editorial story.

Editorial.

Daily pictures to pair with editorial and video reporting.

I work a lot on catalogues for cardiology, gastroenterology, series catalogues, and I have to buy a lot of stock photos for those.

For me it’s web design.

Web design, yeah.

Yeah, I was going to say interactive.

I guess, thinking about—The reason why we had you do this pretest is just I know you’re doing it day-in and day-out, but just to really get some of the big things in your mind. In going through that process, what stuck out in respect to your overall experience in looking for photo stock? Anything that kind of surprised you?

Just from the homework assignment?

Yeah.

Just a general sense—and this goes for in my everyday life, as I’m sure everyone can attest to it as well—A lot of looking for either video or stills through the different online search engines for stock


photography, I find that you need to be really on point with your keyword searches, because the photos could be there, but you may never find them if you’re not putting in the correct words, terminology. I get frustrated very quick, especially if I’m working on a number of different projects at once. Let’s say, we do a lot of healthcare stories. If I’m looking for, let’s say, generic medicine, where I don’t want to see Tylenol or Advil but I want to see just generic tablets and stills, if I don’t type that in properly, then I’ll get a bunch of photos that are totally irrelevant, and either I’ll need to focus my time and energy thinking, “OK, well how do I phrase it properly so I can get the images I want? Or do I spend the time searching through page after page after page of irrelevant photos that probably I will never need?” I found that, again, the search criteria is really important because, again, a company like Getty or Corbis or you name it, can have the photos that you want, but if you’re not putting in the correct words, then you’re spinning your words and can wind up with nothing. Then I, often, will go to another website or another search engine to go look elsewhere, using either that same terminology or then fix it there.

You’d be surprised how effective the date comes into things, as well. One of the search criteria, besides wording, for me, is date, because my images have to be timely, unique, current. They have to be up-to-do-date over what we’re doing. Then you’ll get a curve ball where it’s something like the Titanic. And the word “Titanic” can be used as a description, rather than an actual event or an item. Using the parameter of time, at least on my end, is very important. I found that, particularly with one of my assignments, that I try to use that to the best of my ability, but then keywording became a problem, because I was looking for one very particular item for one particular event, and it kept giving me parts of the event. They weren’t giving me what I wanted, which I knew I would find eventually, but I had to go through page and page and page and page and page and I eventually found it.

I see everyone else shaking their head here.

No, I totally agree with what Steve said, and Alan, too. One thing that I would like to add is one issue that I usually come across with, and this goes through all the providers, is I work a lot, sometimes, for Latino companies, and finding images of Latinos in Getty, ThinkStock, Corbis, can be challenging. It’s also—Sometimes, I think it’s the lack of knowledge of what a Latino looks like. I’m Puerto Rican. We could come black, brown, white. A lot of times, these companies might, when you search under “Latino,” you only get people of dark skin, when


there could be a typical Latina that is completely white with brunette hair, and she is Latina, it’s just that they have a specific look to them. I don’t think a lot of companies know exactly how to cater to that. It’s a huge market. It’s a huge market.

What other challenges are you guys coming across? These are great—the time, ethnicity.

I have a huge ethnicity problem, because I always have to show nurses, or groups of nurses, or groups of doctors, and it’s hard. One of my home—One of the pages you’ll see, I picked an image that had a lot of different male/female. Those are challenges, too, for doctors, because all of the female doctors look like nurses. It’s hard. Gender and ethnicity.

Ethnicity.

I would say commonalities between things. One of my other assignments was I needed something—I was looking for a place. It was giving me another place from another country, which had the same name as a place in the United States, and the commonality just kept bringing up one distinct area, versus what I needed, which was on the other side of the world. The idea behind the description of something that could mean one thing or another. It could present real problems, if you need something really quickly, when you think something’s really obvious, and then it turns out it’s not, because the same thing will give you another result for something completely different. In my case, it was the name of a city. And I included the state, too, and it kept giving me a city in another country.

I just—For me, there’s a couple of issues. Like one, for example, I would love if there was a frequency of buys or the most recent time stamp on those, because I don’t want to buy something that, maybe, has been in use in a frequency of time. The other thing I was thinking about as a solution, I don’t know why anyone created a visual search. So use an algorithm—Like, for example, I have one or two stock for the photo images that uses an algorithm, and then can replicate the time of type and feeling that—

ThinkStop has that functionality.

Oh, I didn’t know that.


You can do that in Google—I used to use it in Google all the time.

Is it just as effective? Because I use Getty most of the time. I use it just as—

I just used it today and it was effective. The things that I knew, the image came from that collection, and I think I had a comp, I just put it in there, and it gave me, immediately, the reference number and everything I needed.

That’s how I get around it. I use it from the same, whoever, photographer or whoever put it up. That’s how I get around it.

Have you guys had the experience where you came across the—You’re looking for a specific image and then you couldn’t find it?

Yeah.Yes.

Yes, many times, yeah.

What would be an example?

Just to understand the question: I found it and then trying to go back and find it later on?

Just you were looking something and you had no—

Oh, so I had something in my head that I knew I wanted—

And you couldn’t find it, yeah.

That happened to me, almost—I lucked out, but I was getting to the point where I was, “It’s not happening.”

I can’t think of one right now, but I—

What was—What were you looking for?

I needed to find the—In Times Square, there is a sign that says—Oh, excuse me. I’m sorry—That says, “Dow Jones.” I needed to find that, and I needed to find it in a certain way where I could crop out the sign


and not have all of the periphery around it. It kept giving me images where I couldn’t get the exact style I was looking for. I had in my head, “This is what I want. I know it’s there.” And it took me about 20 minutes to actually figure it out, because I had to go look and look, and look, and look. But actually, one of my other assignments was I needed to find something, and I couldn’t get it.

Have you guys ever hired a photographer to get the image you needed?

I have.

Yes.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

And what were you—What was your roadblock, where you just said, “I have to—“

Sometimes, if you’re photographing a specific place, or for a real estate company, or for places where you don’t want a generic image, you want it specific to the business you’re marketing, then, of course, hiring is better.

Yeah. I did that, too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Same thing?

For particular holidays. Because we need, again, timely things, so we need up-to-date pictures of what a building looks like during holiday time, or what the interior of a store or a mall. They have to be current, because the stores change with trends, so if we have the inside of a mall in 2012, and then in 2013 they’re all closed, we can’t show that older image. So I’ve had to have someone go out there and take it.


Adam, you bring up a good point about current, up-to-date images. Do you ever have frustrations trying to find that, overall? Finding those current, up-to-date?

One of the other things that I think that I sometimes run into, and it would be interesting to hear what other people have to say, too, is some of the images that I find just seem—I don’t want to say, “cheesy,” but staged.

Yeah.

Just too perfect.

Stock photography has a look.

Yes.

Yeah, and it’s something that is just totally irrelevant—

Yes, yes.

Because I would never use that in a campaign, because it just looked like—For example, I had to find someone going and using an ATM. And I wanted to avoid faces, but I wanted to show, obviously, an ATM and the card. But there’s a beautiful woman, the lighting is perfect, she’s smiling with her card. I’m like, “That would never happen.” And I understand, there are pictures for every genre, but when I looked at it, I’m like, “No, I would—No, this doesn’t work. No, that doesn’t work.” It just looks totally staged in that aspect.

That’s usually the big challenge of finding a stock photo that doesn’t look like a stock photo.

Exactly.

Right. That’s the [INAUDIBLE] I have in, actually, medical stock photography—

Yes, smiling doctors—

Yes. Looking at a chart and smiling.

If you’re doing a story about cancer, you don’t want a doctor smiling.


A physician smiling—that’s my biggest—

Yeah, we have all this biotech, and we have to constantly find images that reflect advanced laboratories, and it looks like a really cool, cutting-edge experiment, and it’s just doctor, old person, stethoscope.

In a blank room. Or just standing in a hallway that doesn’t look like a hospital.

Yeah. And that’s particularly—ThinkStock is particularly notorious for that. Yeah, it’s got it’s—It’s got a thousand plusses, but it’s got 999 minuses, and that’s one of them.

You guys mentioned a few sources that you’re using. I wrote this down. So I have Getty Images, Corbis, ThinkStock, what other sources are you using?

I use BigStock.

What is it called?

BigStock.

BigStock.

ShutterStock.

ShutterStock.

I use major—Other major editorial ones. Like I use the Associated Press and Bloomberg.

Oh, yeah.

Corbis is one.

iStock.

I also use Pond Five, which is a great site.

Pond Five, yeah.


Alamy is, actually, a good one.

Since you guys are so close with this—One thing I want you to do for me is, thinking about all these different sources that you’re using—I’m just going to put these up here—Getty and Corbis and ThinkStock. You talked about a lot of the frustrations that you’re having, in respect to search and the type of images that you’re finding. They’re too posed or they have that tacky feel. If you could help me understand what are the pain points or frustrations with Getty? What are the frustrations with Corbis and ThinkStock. Make one—You know, you have more frustrations. You can just write on PostIts. Why don’t you post this—Grab a stack. Thinking about your frustrations, if you could just write them on PostIts. And grab a marker, too. I’ll give you markers, because that way we’ll see it really well. Did everyone get a marker?

We’re actually writing the frustrations?

Yeah, just a summary of the frustration. Like, “Having to do multiple searches.” All the things that you guys are talking about. I’m going to grab some more markers just so—And then, if you could get up and put them under the source. So you already were talking a little bit like, OK, with iStock versus Getty, this is some of the different experiences you have, so if you could put that. If it’s more of a pain point or frustration with iStock, put it under iStock. And you could put the frustrations under more than one, but I just really want to understand your different experiences with all of these sites.

I’m not sure if anyone in here uses Bloomberg, but that’s a big one for me, so I might have a few gripes.

You might have the most—Yeah. What I was saying to everyone in the others who did this, this is like a venting board, by the sources that you’re using. It’s the one time you can completely vent about something that you’re doing all the time.

I have the [INAUDIBLE] here, in case you guys need to—I think you know it so well. Yeah, feel free to start posting them up here. We’ll take a look.


You guys can stand up, so that way we can kind of surround and talk—It might be hard to see.

Mine goes across the board, so I don’t know—

If there’s any that’s maybe a little more frustrating than others, because we’re just trying to understand how they work for you. Just trying to [INAUDIBLE] so we can focus in, here—

This is more of a general—

You could stand—stay. Because it might be hard to see some of these. OK, so for Getty images, we have refining search. Is this—

Dearth. Dearth.

Dearth of search. No visual search.

And then, I have light box. Category of depository images.

Let’s see, anything else with search. Search accuracy. Tell me a little bit, specific to Getty, the issues with the search. So refining: Tell me about that.

Just—Actually, just honing into the exact, to keywords that I’m looking for.

Do you have an example you can give?

Yeah, I often get an array of images that I literally have to spend a lot of time on just to refine it. To me, it was really the amount of the results, and then the actually refining of those.

What do you mean by, “No visual search”?

Oh yeah, what I mentioned earlier, using an algorithm. They mentioned some other site does that, but Getty isn’t. Then I just have—It’s doing everything in lightbox, but I do find the categorization is just not the way I want it to be in terms of how it should be structured.

Does anybody else find that?


Yeah, that’s a good point, because one of my gripes was it’s too event-specific. Like, for example, I needed a photo of Sundance. There’s probably 10,000 photos of Sundance over the last five days, but everything had to do with an event: this premier, this premier, this party, this [INADUIBLE]. I needed—This mountain, whatever. I needed a sign. So I went out and I had to look for a sign. It took me like two hours to find. But all of the filters were too event-specific. Now, one of the things I do like about Getty is they do have—I don’t know if anyone else has this on the top of theirs, where it says, “newest, oldest, last match, and most popular.” That’s a life saver. But then, when you get to the filters, it says on your left side, where it has all of the break it down by type, it’s all just—It’s very, very specific to a certain event. So if you need Yankee Stadium, you’re going to get games; you’re not going to get the stadium. You’ll get Derek Jeeter, a close-up on his face or hitting a ball. That’s one of those—that kind of structures and all.

But the event is—I’ve noticed it more on the editorial side, not the creative.

Right. That’s right. It’s more of an editorial—But I need generic—I need the Sundance Sign and I’ll have to go and pull it out of something else, but I’ll have to look through party image and party image and party image until I finally get it.

To be honest, on the editorial side, I don’t even use that event sidebar.

Neither do I.

To me, it’s just useless.

And then you’re just royalty free and the whole thing of variety.

Yes.

OK. So then we also have what we brought up before, the diversity of Latinos. Do you think—There’s a lot about search under Getty. Do you think you feel more frustration with search on Getty versus others?

I think I just use it more.

The thing is, I use it more. Yeah.


So no reason for subscription versus pay. Tell me about that.

I have a subscription. I have a monthly subscription, which limits me to how many I have per month. And it costs X amount of dollars. But sometimes, going back to the question about you saw something and you can’t find it, I’ll see this amazing image—I’ll go on there, and it says, “Quote your price.” And I don’t understand why isn’t that included in my package. It doesn’t tell me why.

And would it be a royalty-free image?

No. This would be an editorial.

[INAUDIBLE]. I know the answer to that. Getty has different—How should I call it? Collections, in a way, that get assigned to a particular subscription package. If your client or your company is paying for a huge, all-encompassing one, you get access to everything. But if you have a limited one, then you get access to USA, North America, and not anything else.

Right. But our ThinkStock one is unlimited.

Unlimited. I know—We recruited you all because you’re buying a lot of photos. Who, here, has the subscription? I know you do, Adam. Anybody else?

I don’t have it now, but I work with clients that have had subscriptions, yeah.

Because we have the subscription to Getty, ThinkStock, and Bloomberg.

OK, so Corbis we have limited resources, same thing of no visual searching, price—

Yeah.

That’s what I wrote, too.

Price, yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Out of the major stock companies, Corbis is the most expensive.


When you say expensive, what’s an example? What’s expensive? What would it be, per photo or—?

Per photo, yeah. Per photo.

And what would be too expensive per photo?

If it’s for web use, $250 for a picture for web.

It can depend on the campaign, but it could go from a couple hundred to, easily, up to $1200 or $1300.

Yeah.

And yeah, here’s another one: Can be costly. Filters aren’t helpful on Corbis? Is that—

Well, that’s actually more of a universal, but I just put it under Corbis, but you know.

OK. Then ThinkStock, we have photos are too posed, dated—

But the filters on ThinkStock are fantastic.

Yeah, they are.

They are awesome. They break it down by person, orientation, style—

Ethnicity, which is why I use it a lot.

ThinkStock filters are actually—I can’t complain about those at all.

Did anybody who had a ThinkStock subscription get your customer service person or something to tell you that you’re downloading your limit? I had that with ThinkStock. They actually insulted me so badly by calling me that I used up all whatever it was, like 25—

No, I never had that.

I had that. When I tried to renew my subscription, they said, “Well, you do download a lot.” “No, I downloaded what I paid for.” So I had that problem with them.


That’s too bad, because they’re always really nice to me. That’s what—[CROSSTALK].

Yeah, I know. I know.

ShutterStock, you had photo quality?

That’s just—Compared to Getty and Corbis, some of the ones like iStock and ShutterStock, they look more stock photo-y.

How about you guys—You bring up this whole thing about stock photos, like pose and you said the word “cheesy,” Steve. What would be the opposite of “stock photo”? What is “non-stock”?

Candid.

Yeah, candid.

Well, iStock and BigStock, they’re actually taking photos from amateur photographers, so that’s why you’re getting that. I don’t think Getty—I’m not sure, Getty—Getty actually purchases images from professional photographers. If you just uploaded a semi-reasonable-looking image, iStock and BigStock will actually sell those, and that’s why you’re getting that—

Do you think it’s just professional versus non-professional? Or is there a way of stock photos and how they—

No, they’re consciously staged.

Yes.

Universally lit, and they don’t look like, “Here’s a news report that happens to be in the exact building you happened to need a photo of.” It’s more like, “Somebody lit the crap out of this and told everybody to smile.”

It’s usually inside of an office.

Because I see in the middle, here, things that you just couldn’t pinpoint to any source. It’s just this same image, posed, too


staged. So “candid.” Any other words that come to mind thinking “non-stock”?

Just events.

The real world kind of thing. If you need an office, you couldn’t have an office where it looks like one of these rooms, where it’s pretty generic. There’s a conference table, there’s people sitting around and having a meeting. But then I can get a picture inside of the Facebook office, and you can tell that it’s not taken in a studio, because it’s more of a—It’s the real—It’s out in the real world, so to speak.

Are you guys willing to pay more for a photo that’s more real world?

Yeah. Absolutely.

Particularly on my end. Again, I’m strictly editorial, for 99.999% of what I’m doing. So for us, it has to—We have to have that.

We talked, here—I saw price come up a little bit, here, with Corbis. What about price for the others?

They’re more comparable, in my opinion.

It’s pretty reasonable.

We have unlimited ThinkStock, and it’s—Compared to what I’m hearing from everybody else, it’s extremely reasonable.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

What type of size are you typically buying? You know how you get different options?

If I can, I always buy the largest resolution, because you don’t know if you’re going to be cropping in this tight in the picture. So I always try to get the largest resolution available.

Yeah, I’ll take the most highest res and then let me downscale or do whatever, but it’s hard to work the other way around.


Oh, no, you can’t.

Our highest is 1280/720 in terms of our highest resolution, because we’re web—web and web video. So we don’t go to highest, because we just don’t have to. So we go medium to high, depending on what we’re doing.

Do you think—That’s a really—So does the largest—You want the largest just because cropping and all that? What about—You were talking a lot about filters, too, earlier, just in general. How important is the filter, like the lighting, on the picture?

The lighting? To me, not just—candid is what I look for. To me, I would prefer to see more artistically interesting and inventive photography. There’s just times when I don’t just want a picture of a building. I want an interesting picture of a building, and that’s not really what those sites specialize in. That’s usually something you would want to hire a photographer for, or somebody you know their style.

Well, you know, lighting is key. It can make or break a picture.

Do you mean a search filter or, actually, a—

No, artistic filters.

Oh, I took it as “search filters.” Sorry.

I was thinking more the type of lighting—Search a filter by the type of lighting.

For a press conference, it’s got to be lit.

Of course.

No, this is really great, just to see all the differences. I think it really helps just pinpoint everything. I guess—What would be the maximum price that you’d be willing to pay?

For an image?

Yeah.


I think it depends on how is it going to be used. But for an editorial story, $250 is, I think, the most. If it’s not an exclusive image, $250.

If it’s not exclusive. If it’s exclusive, does that change the game?

Oh yes, it does.

It would be less. Less than $250. For an amount of output? Less than that. Per image? At most, I would say in the low hundreds, if that.

Now I want to get your take on—I mentioned to a few of you out in the front room, we want to talk about a new product, and I want to get your take on it. So before I do, I want to know, does anybody here use Flickr? Show of hands.

I’ve used it.

I’ve used it, but I never find a lot of stuff. You scroll pictures and it doesn’t really have too much.

I used to work for a client that had a very tight budget, and we used a lot of their creative common content. I actually got really good at searching, creative common.

Yeah, I have it for myself and commons.

Actually, I find that, at times, if you get a good creative common image, there are photographers in there that are high quality. They’re amateurs, but they’re so good. Your images look fresher and they look more real. They don’t look like stock because they are actually real people. They’re not paid models to act the scene.

I’ve had to go to the Flickr creative many, many times and look for stuff, and I’ve had great success with that.

Yes, me too.

Yeah, absolutely. Particularly for something that’s a little bit more specific. If it’s a specific—like a small town restaurant or, hell, even a sporting event that you don’t want to pay for, there are people who sit in the front row who take a solid photo that’s free. You can use it. And it’s free.


Do you go ahead and use it? Or do you sometimes you reach out to the photographer and ask to buy it?

If it’s under the creative license, I use it. I read carefully as to what the limitations are, but—

With proper credits, free use.

The photographer attribution and all that?

Yes. Yes.

Yeah.

Well, the new product is Flickr is going to be offering a licensed photography, like photo stock site. I have some mock-ups, I have some videos, and I want to get your take, just of the rough product. Just get your overall take about it. Let’s start out with—We could do this two ways, just depending how you feel. I have some mock-ups. You can come over and look at them or I can throw them out here. What would you prefer? Do you feel like getting up?

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They’re already there. I mean, yeah.

I have two, so I’ll just spread it out, so maybe three can come on this side, this side. See, now this would be what we would call the landing page. This would be where you would go if you came to Flickr Stock. And what you would see—Just come over here a little bit. You would see your profile, if you were to login. A light box, which would save all of your photos that you searched for and you put in your light box, and your cart. Then there would be—The whole essence of this would be a clean search, would then take you into an advanced search. The clean search would just be a search box. Then just three things to know about Flickr Stock. It includes incredible photographers, the home of many world-class photographers; authentic photos; and, then, simple pricing. Then, here, we would have trending collections. What that would be is curators on Flickr would create collections based on specific


categories or themes, and based on this, you could go—maybe if you like a specific curator—for inspiration. So maybe, if you’re not coming in with exactly knowing what you want, you can use some inspiration from these collections, and they would show based on the community activity. If they got a lot of likes, this special collection, the more likes they get the more they would be able to be shown on this landing page. So you would see pretty much the most liked, coming up here. Then, underneath that would be popular themes. This would be different types of categories. Like you see portraits, you see sky [INAUDIBLE], and this would also be another thing just for inspiration, if you didn’t know what you were coming in looking for. And this would be driven all by the data of searches, so what people are searching for, versus this is community likes and such. So before we talk about it, I think I gave you guys note pads. If you wouldn’t mind grabbing it and writing down some initial thoughts. [INAUDIBLE]. This is just about the landing page. We’re going to go into what the experience would be like after, for the advanced search and all that.

Can I ask a question?

Of course.

For the trending collections and popular themes, would it be almost like a revolving carousel, where the images are going to be switching out? Or is it just going to be static images? Or do they change at every couple of minutes? Or how does that work?

Yeah, they’d be changing based on—For the trending collections?

Yeah.

Based on the likes they’re getting, so this would be updating, because the community would be liking and voting and such. The popular theme is going to be based on the Flickr data, so that would be updating too. Not knowing how specific—I don’t know if it would be every few minutes, but it would definitely be updating.

But it wouldn’t be just a static page.


No. No, definitely not. And another example, just to give you an idea—It could be something like—I don’t know if you guys use eBay or Etsy and how they have the collections. It would be something like that.

Is it more like Pinterest?

Yeah. Something like that, where you get to pick—It’s really just a categorized composite of specific images from a certain curator.

Does anybody get to be a curator, or is it staff?

This would be from the curators that have the professional experiences—so, maybe, 15 years experience. These guys are very much the pros in this one. OK, so what were the overall thoughts on this?

I think the page is attractive. It’s pleasing to the eye when you first look at it. The content looks pretty organized, from where I can see here. The only thing that I noticed that should be there, especially for us who are professionals using this type of service, there should be somewhere here that you can click on and say, “Advanced Search.” I don’t know if that functionality will be available; if you just don’t type anything, it takes you to an advanced search page. But they should have something right there on the—

Does anybody agree with that—that idea?

I like what you said, but I also agree with what you said, how it’s clean. Because that’s how it is now. Or at least, that’s the way I do it. I’ll just like—If I need Yankee Stadium, I’ll type that in and it will give me every result. Then I can go do the advanced, but that does help off the bat, if you can say, “Yankee Stadium, night time, empty, winter.” Then you can go.

Something that you had, actually, mentioned, which I think is going in two different directions, with the trending collection and popular themes. I think it’s great, you mentioned, for people looking for inspiration, but I think that clearly defines two different categories of people. If you’re looking for inspiration, then you probably are not sitting in this room. Not that we’re not creative people, but I’m going


onto a stock page because I know the image that I want. Just like if you’re looking for Yankee Stadium or you’re looking for a medical story, you know what you want. I’m not going to go to a trending collection thinking, “Well, what could be inspiring for a medical story?” I know what the story is. I know what I want. And I probably would find the trending collection irrelevant for my professional life. Now, as a consumer, I go on Flickr right now because I like looking at people’s photos. I like sharing stuff. Things like that. And that’s something I would find interesting, like, “Oh, let me see what the people that are more savvy than I am are looking at.” Or “Let’s see what the most popular is.” And that I would find interesting, but on a consumer level, not on a professional level. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does. It definitely makes sense. Who here agrees with—

I don’t agree completely. I’ve worked for many years for AOL, and one of my functions there was to curate the Pictures of the Week photo gallery. If these trending collections are timely, you know, have a date, this would have been a good place for me to search, because sometimes the Pictures of the Week, I pretty much knew what events happened in the week, but there was also room just to get anything that was created during that week that was incredibly stunning. This would be a good place for me to go and find inspiration, and be like, “Oh, that’s a great image and it was shot this week. I can use it.”

I tend to agree with Steve. It’s a really cool idea, but professionally, I have such specific ideas that I’m not sure how much time I’d spend browsing for fun.

The only thing I would say with that is that, if it could—the more you search, would it tailor to the kind of interests you have? So if you need for medical, if it’s going to be either doctors or machinery or surgical or biotech, would that generate to what is trending, based on your search query or what you have in your light box? Because if I’m going to go up there and it’s like, you know, trending collections is animals, seasons, and the weather, that’s fine, because it looks cool, but if it’s there just because it’s there, it doesn’t help anyone professionally in the event that everyone in this room who has to do something very specific, it’s sort of dead space.

What would be cool is kind of like what Facebook does. It knows who you are and it gives you ads specifically for things that they know, in


your computer, that you’ve searched for. So if I can put in, somewhere in there, that I—my clients, I have, most of them are medical, but I do have a gun dealer I work for and some other—I’d like trending collections, or something, specifically for those industries I work for.

Yeah. No, I was going to say I saw no S&S functionality in this. So even if there was a [INAUDIBLE] searching, then you could do this more real-time. That’s more oriented toward that. That would be of more interest to me, because I know people—especially the clients I work, they want images that are sort of timely. Also, what would be great, along with what—

Amy.

Amy said, if there could be an alert notification feature. So if you had a visual—let’s say contained visual searches, if you had a notification that told you these rolling new images that haven’t uploaded [INAUDIBLE].

So only the most recent images would be another thing that might be helpful?

But based on a key—

And then relevant—

Oh yeah. Absolutely.

If these collections were relevant to your past searches.

Yeah, right.

Great. This is really helpful. Let’s get to our next one. This would be the Advanced Search page. So after going from this page, you would then go to the Advanced Search. I also have a video to show you alongside this. I just want to show you this first. Going in, you would be able to search by the orientation, landscape, portrait, colors. You could search by price, size. And this would be Flickr Stock, and it would just have stock—licensed, curated photos. But you could expand your search and pull in the creative commons, you could pull in all the public images, everything, by expanding your pool in your search. Number of people, gender, and ethnicity would also be


in this search. This is how the search would look. If you want to write down some initial thoughts, and then I want to show you a video, because it shows more of the functionality of it. Let me put this in the middle of us. We’ve got three, three, two. If you guys want to come three on this side and three on this side, that way you can see it really good. I have it on the iPad, but I think it’s going to be better if everyone sees it at the same time. Where’d we go? OK.

[PRESENTATION PLAYS]

I want to show it to you again, but explain a few things. So I first wanted you just to take it all in and see what it’s all about.

[CROSSTALK].

Can you make that part bigger?

Yeah. The last, you can make it—

Not the last. I’m talking about the thumbnails, because that looked really small, when she did the lasso. If you could make the thumbnails larger.

So your question is the thumbnails, you want to—

Yeah. Let’s say our monitor is that mirror, and you had 10,000 images on there. From here, that’s a lot. But if I go up to here and I look at it like this, these get bigger. But can you make them bigger—If I’m standing back here, I want to see bigger ones and be able to scroll.

So once you see your thumbnails, can you kind of zoom in to whatever way—

Oh, no—I just mean can I have a row of five and then just keep scrolling down the page? Things like that? Because I thought that might have been just a little small.

Yeah. The idea of that is just to show you how many results are available, based on your search. And then you can start going through them in detail. Yeah, so if you won’t mind just writing


down some initial thoughts on the whole search, based on this and the video. What was the overall take?

I liked that. I liked seeing all of my images at once and zooming in.

It’s just like the current Flickr. When you go in and you do a search, they’re there. But like Adam was saying, it would beneficial if you had—I will call it “column” are—this is by five, by 10, show results by—even if it’s just by three, so you can see them large. You want to just—

Yeah, you can scroll down.

If it looked like that—like that page in your example, that’s great. To have 50 going across—I’m sure everyone here has equipment that is expensive and you can see things very large, but in the event that you don’t, if you’re working on a laptop, that’s not really as user-friendly as you’d think.

Would it be good to see everything and then be able to get to the—

Well, not everything, but you can have—If they were that size and you just keep scrolling down—

Yeah, I don’t think it’s necessary to see all the results in just that one page. The scrolling is a lot better. I don’t get anything by seeing a map of just thumbnails of 1500 results.

It would be helpful to have that view if you could zoom in and out like you do on an iPhone, you know what I mean?

Or like on a Mac. You can make your thumbnails larger and smaller.

Yeah, that’s what I was thinking—some type of intuitive search, so as you hover over it, it then enlarges, and then you can see a more refined sort of carousel of selected images, so it actually saves you time. I know, for me, I can go through them pretty quickly.

I did like the lasso idea, especially if a number of pictures are grouped together. Let’s say you’re doing a search and—If you’re looking for hang gliding, like we saw, and you wanted the shot with the mountain in the background. If five of them are all very similar, that you can lasso and pull in together, that’s great. But I don’ think it’s going to


work if you’ve got one over here and one over here and one over her and one over here.

It would be good if you could make multiple lassos. Select by [INAUDIBLE], then look at them.

How about just being able to just quickly grab the ones you like?

Based on just the layout of that, I just have two things. One, and maybe this is just me, I’ve never, ever had any use for a color palette. That could be, obviously, different professions, different worlds, but for me, I just—But you have like ten colors, so what does that—You have ten colors.

What if you could customize or expand—If you could expand and hide certain things that were relevant and non-relevant?

Yeah, sure. That’s always good.

Another thing to point out: If you could go through this whole experience without signing in, or doing what we would call a “light registration,” just sign in with the e-mail and you could search, save things to your light box, come back and still get to that light box without being signed in, because of the cookies, it would save it. However, if you were to actually do a full registration, you could view photos without watermarks. What do you guys think of that?

I absolutely need that sometimes, because I have to show my clients mock-ups, three different versions. And they’re like, “What’s this?” You see the watermark of iStock in the background, and I always have to explain it’s for position only.

How could this search—You saw a mock-up, a video. It’s very rough. How does this feel, compared to some of the other sources you’re using?

I find it more useful this way. I can scan really quickly, and zero in on a particular image that I like.

The other ones, particularly with the more of the—Again, it’s sort of in my own world, everything—I have metadata included. When you see it, it’s five across—each one of those has a mountain of data that’s sitting


under it. Whereas this one is just the image. I can look through 200 images in 20 seconds, whereas that I have to go through page and page and page. That’s what the commons, Flickr Commons now, is good, because everything just sort of goes. You have—it is what it is on the screen, and then you click it, and then the data is visible.

Let me show you another.

I just have one more thing on this one.

Oh, yeah, sure.

You said that you were going to include the Commons area. That’s Commons in this search? But I think you need to make that explicitly clear. Instead of saying, “Request license use,” I think that needs to literally—You have to have one that says, “Include Creative Commons,” to make—Because there are some people who—And again, everyone in this room knows that they’re talking about. There are people who don’t. I work with them.

There’s a lot of people who don’t, yeah.

So I think to make it as intuitive as humanly possible will not only help the people who use it every day, but it will just make it an easier product to use. It will make you want to go there because it is easy.

OK. No, that’s great. That’s great. It’s really helpful. So this would be the Check Out page.” You can come up and check out this. Feel free to bring your notepads, too. So this Check Out page would have, of course, the image that you selected, so you can see it up close. Then you could download a copy, save it to your light box, share it through most social—like Facebook, Twitter, and [INAUDIBLE], and e-mail. Then you could purchase it by different sizes or different prices. You could, then, go to the photographer’s page—He’ll have a profile page, if you want to see more of his work. Also, you can see the different tags, in case you want to filter—Maybe you like this, but you want to just look at some more of San Francisco. So you could use that tag as a way to do another search, like another way of filtering. Then, at the bottom, it would be Photos Like These, something like what you would see on Amazon, based on what you’ve searched.


Viewers also purchased.

Yes. What are some initial reactions of this? This Check Out page?

Looks clean.

Yeah.

Pretty nice—

Could you include, where it says, “Uploaded on,” could you have included when it was taken? So we can—I can upload an image from 1995—

Yeah, there’s a big difference—

Or it can also include how many times it’s been purchased, as well.

But I think the when it was taken is big.

Yeah.

Because that’s—If you have—Even if New York—If you have the skyline, obviously it looks different now than it did in 1992, so for someone looking, obviously they’re going to understand it. But if it’s the skyline of Vienna, or if It’s Oklahoma City, there’s going to be stark differences between these two things.

That’s good. Let me show you what we were starting to talk about in the Check Out is the Profile page. This would be the Profile page. This is the Photographer’s Profile page. Like I was saying, you can click and see the photographer’s page, and on that would be a little description of what he focuses on—he or she focuses on, the type of photography, just a little bit of description about them, how many photos they have, how many albums, their followers—maybe if you’re following anybody. So you can go in and click on the albums, and they have everything organized by—This is more landscape, but sorted by different themes, you would be able to see all that. Then you can also follow that photographer right on this page.


What would the “Social Media” give you? If I were to click “Facebook,” would it go to that Facebook page? Or would it share this—Say, “Hey, check out Johnny Appleseed’s profile”?

Exactly. It would be sharing his profile page. Maybe with your team, you’re like, “Hey, we love this guy. This is his page.”

Now, can you go back to the other one? The one you just showed me? Then, with this one, I think this is sort of irrelevant, because if—Let’s say, “Hey, check out this photo of this guy on a bike by the lake,” and you share it to Facebook, then what’s stopping someone from my Facebook profile taking that image and using it for something else, when I just spent $49 to buy it? Because if I can share that to my Twitter feed, they open it up, “Oh, this photo’s nice.” Click. “Let me save it for my blog or my Tumblr.” I just paid $129.

It wouldn’t be relevant for professionals. That’s really when your friends—

I think that’s consumer—

Your Facebook, as a consumer—

It wouldn’t be that—You were buying much larger resolution. It would be like—

Oh, right. But at the same time, they can still—What’s stopping them from taking that preview?

That, too.

It’s not only that. It’s like, why would you want to do that?

I could understand about the profile. That’s great.

Right. Right.

Because that’s a perfect one.

Are you guys feeling like e-mail is all you need? Or—

I don’t need anything.


To share with your team?

Actually, I do, because I’ve worked in places in which the editors are working remotely. Unless copying and pasting the link will be the equivalent of just clicking that “e-mail” button there, would be the same. A lot of times, I’m doing research, and the editor is in Colorado, and she wants to see my results, or at least my top five choices. That could be useful.

[INAUDIBLE] share on social media in that aspect, then why can’t there be something that’s been printed on the image of—

Right. That’s watermarked. [CROSSTALK].

A watermark would be on, unless you were allowed to go in and actually—

Like, “Hey, check out this guy with a bike by the lake,” and then it brings you to that landing page, rather than the image itself. So you would get the preview in your feed. You click the link, and then it brings you to the pricing.

How important do you think it is to have a Photographer’s Profile page? Is this something—

Here’s another comment that I had that was kind of interesting. If I’m doing this for work, and I’m purchasing a photo for a campaign, I don’t think I’m going to go take advantage of social media to share it with anybody. Why would I want to send—“Hey, look. I’ve purchased this for a breaking story that’s going out in a week. Or a commercial that’s going to be—“ I wouldn’t do that. But if I was purchasing it for my blog or Facebook, then of course I would share. So I think that’s the standard delineation between, again, professional and consumer use.

I think the idea of sharing the photographer page is good, because then, if this is—Let’s just say, for example, that this exercise is about highlighting photographers for stock, where it’s not exactly the cheesiest of staged garbage that we’ve all seen. That would be good, too, because a lot of people don’t know what any of these agencies are, but everybody knows what Flickr is. Just saying that everybody knew what Web Shots was. So I think that is beneficial, maybe to have free and paid, particularly on that page, to see what’s available.


Something like that. I think the artist’s page is more beneficial than the social media tied to the particular image.

Now I walk you through this idea of the light box. How it would work is this, of course, is a more rough mock up, just as the others, but while you’re searching—You’re doing your advanced search. There would be a little icon where you could say either “Make a new light box” or “Add it” to any of the ones that you have. So you could create a new one or you might have all these light boxes started for your projects, and you could just add it to that. Again, you can do this without signing in. Then, this is the page where you could look at your project view of all your light boxes. You could, then, zoom in and see a specific project, so see all the different images that you saved for that project. Then, here you would be able to share the images of an entire light box with others in your team or your client, either by clicking “Copy the link” or sharing via e-mail. So they would get this and be able to see your whole light box. Or if you’d rather just share one image, you can also do that, as well. You could pick one image and share that with the client.

Easy enough.

What do you guys think of this overall light box experience?

They would get a link and they would click it, and it would open up and they would see it.

I think it’s seamless.

Yeah, that’s—

Very helpful.

I think it’s just, yeah—

It makes it easy.

How different is this—I know we were talking a little bit about light boxes in the others. How different is this?


That’s—Getty, you need a full—They don’t let you do anything unless you login. It’s like going to the airport. You really need to be able to get in there.

And ThinkStock—

And ThinkStock, you can’t do anything if you don’t login. There’s nothing. There’s no page.

Because they want to track you.

Right, of course.

[INAUDIBLE] inviting—It makes you like you’re having collaboration with team members and with clients.

I like the fact that you can easily just share a link via e-mail, right in that page.

Yeah, that’s really helpful. Amazingly helpful.

With the clients, if they have to do more than two steps, they’re like, “I’m not interested.”

Especially when you want to do like a “move forward” type of a deal, you want to get the type and feeling, you can share some of the imagery in a sort of “housed” type of environment. I like that.

Tatiana, anything?

No, I agree. It’s really well designed.

Now I want to show you—We talked a little bit about the separate site, Flickr Stock, which I just took you through. But there’s also the option of going through Flickr to get to these. There’s two scenarios. I’m going to show you this page.

I have a question.

Yeah.

I don’t know—I guess everybody has this. If I go to ThinkStock, iStock, BigStock, they all have the same images. So for this new product, are


you going to have exclusive photographers just for Flickr? Because that would be great for me.

That’s a good idea.

That would be great for everybody.

So Flickr Stock would be all licensed photography. All.

Yeah, but is it licensed just for Flickr?

I’m thinking that—

Oh, you mean exclusive photography?

Just for Flickr, because I’m tired of seeing the same nurse in every single—

So what there would be with Flickr Stock, is it would be a volunteer basis for the photographers. If they were interested in making it exclusive, there would be a 90 days, and they could make it exclusive to Flickr Stock. So it wouldn’t be for every photo, but you could see some that would be exclusive. That’s a great question. This one is more about the experience from one site to another. There could be just a Flickr Stock experience and then there could be a Flickr. The difference between the two is really just about having a separate site or just having the Flickr site. And you could still see all the same content, but the filters would be different. The filters—With Flickr Stock, you would see all licensed photography, by default. Then you could expand it, like I mentioned before, and see Creative Commons and more. With Flickr, you would automatically see what is on Flickr, the public, but then you could also look for stock images as well, by adding that filter. There would be a little icon to indicate that it’s stock photography, licensed. Just the filter is one way, and Flickr is the opposite way. Those are the only two differences. I just want to get your take: Is there one that you prefer, as a really strong user of all these stock sites?

If I had a subscription—If this was a subscription-based service, I would want to have both immediately. I would want to have the Commons, and I want to know what am I allowed to use and what am I paying for.


What, in Commons, can I use, and what am I paying money for? The rest of it, no. Because if I can’t use it, I can’t use it. There’s no point in having it there. If I can have the both together—If I can login to Flickr, I login [email protected], I click “Sign In,” and it gives me everything I can use, between both regular and stock, ready to go. Right when I need it, search, advance, whatever. Good to go. I think having one general—at least for me—would be good.

What about the others?

I like the idea of toggling between the two. That, to me, would be my preferred option. I wouldn’t want it all into one. [INAUDIBLE], if that was possible.

Do you guys have—Just from hearing about both, do you have a preference? Would Flickr Stock be a preference over Flickr?

Flickr Stock would be preference over Flickr.

How come?

Just based upon the designs, to see if it’s more of a user-friendly type of environment, as opposed to—I feel like I could get more creativity out of Flickr Stock, from what I’ve seen so far.

I see some shaking heads. Steve?

I tend to agree. I think I would keep them separate, but be able to toggle back and forth in between the two.

Yeah.

I like indicating which one is from Commons and which one is not.

Yeah.

Yes.

Having that explicitly say—Because then, if you are an average person, and you need to click it, and it’s going to say “free” or “you have to pay a landing.”

mailto:[email protected]


Now I want to run another idea by you guys. Thinking about the licensed, curated photography, versus some of the Creative Commons, there’s another angle that I just want to get your take on. This would be when somebody uploads their image as public, they get a request to license. This means—I don’t know if anybody’s tried to purchase a photo on Flickr. For some of the images, you do have to purchase them, and you have to go through a process, and it currently is you have to e-mail the photographer and—Steven, have you gone through it?

No, but I was—In anticipation of being here, I spent a little more time on Flickr, just going through. But I was looking—What was interesting was you—depending on the photo, you have to click on it and some of the photos are all rights reserved, partial rights for sale. Then you first have to go and then contact the photographer. At least, just from a general consensus, if I’m buying stock photography, that was somewhat of a nuisance, because I don’t want to have to first go through, find a photo, and then find out I’ve got to contact here, whereas the—This is before I knew this information, obviously. Whereas any of the Getty—They’re set up just to buy it right off the bat. Does that make sense? There are a lot of steps involved, in terms of trying to find something, then buy it, then reach out to the person—

That’s why I was asking for some background. To tell you more about—But do you have a question?

For us, we go straight to Commons. We don’t even go to the Home page. We have the Flickr Creative Commons landing. It’s a bookmark. We go straight there. We know we can use it. We know we have to credit it. We know we can manipulate it any way we want. And we use—We go straight there. We don’t even use regular, because what—It’s like the same point. What am I going to do? Wait three days for her to reach out—

If I can’t get it immediately, I’ll go somewhere else trying to get something that I can use right now.

I’ve got to size this in 10 minutes. I go straight to Commons.

Always Creative Commons, because you know that’s the one area. But you’re missing all the other—


Right. But it’s already there, because it’s already—It’s there. It’s free. It’s usable.

Got you. Got you. So this idea would be all the photos would, then, have this option, so you could request a photo and get almost a real-time response, as the photographer will be sent a request, and they can authorize and verify the sell within that same day. What was going to be happening on the background to make this happen is, when a photographer uploads their image, they set it up to have the tags and talk about a pre-established price. So that’s all out of the way. That way, when you request, it goes so much smoother. What do you think of that idea? That would open up.

Again, most of the places where I work are web news oriented places, or editorial oriented places. If I have to wait more than 20 minutes to get my picture, I’m going to go somewhere else.

Yeah. If they have to respond to an e-mail, forget it.

I’ll go somewhere else.

Don’t even—It’s not even worth it.

I’m looking for a seamless experience, where I can just—I like the photo, and see the price, I’ll purchase it.

Maybe if it was automated, where it said, “I want to use this photo,” and you say, “OK, you are agreeing to the conditions that you have to credit it and you can’t manipulate it.”

Absolutely. Yeah.

And it will say—It will automatically authorize, based on the agreement that the photographer has done already when they put it on there. So it’s already done in advance. Because doing anything in real time with someone, having to wait for e-mail, forget it.

E-mail or text.

Right. Forget it. It’s pointless.


What about a—And this could be entirely crazy, but—You mentioned eBay before. If you’re bidding on an option and the price goes up and up and up, but you could always “But It Now,” if an option like that existed—Let’s say I’m working on a campaign with a limited budget, and I had time, and I can reach out to the photographer, I could buy the photo for $250, but if I can wait a couple of days and say, “Hey, I’ve got a budget. I can only spend $175, would you be willing to do that?” And I’ve got the time and he gets back to me and says, “Yeah, I can do that. What are you using it for?” Then something like that might work. But if, again—Which is the same boat as most of you—If I’m working on a campaign and I’ve got budget and time left, I’m going to either buy it or not buy it; I’m not going to wait for someone that may or may not get back to me. The photographer could be out of the country on vacation, for all I know.

I have a question for you: Are these—even if you’re buying them—do you have to credit the photographer?

For the stock, licensed, curated? No.

Because my clients would never allow me to do that.

That’s only for Creative Commons. For those—

For us, for editorial, we do.

You’re purchasing it, so it’s—Yeah, it’s fine. Great. This is really helpful. Just so I get a good understanding, would you say most of the time, it’s under the gun, you don’t have that time for the real day—same day?

Yeah.

Same day, just forget it. Same 10 minutes?

Yeah, 10, 20 minutes at the most. Yeah. Yeah.

Because then, it could be the best photo you’ve ever seen, and if you don’t—You need it in 20 minutes and that 20 minutes goes by, then what’s the point?

I usually have time.


So would this—something helpful?

For me, yeah. Because usually I present a design, vary it. It’s not like a publication going out.

But if your client likes the image and then you find out that, for some reason, you can’t use it or something goes wrong—

Well with this setup, they’re already agree—The photographer’s already agreed to sell it. So it’s really just—

Right. So if they pre-agree, then why do they, then, have to say, “Well, OK”?

Yeah, exactly. I agree with that.

I don’t understand that.

Why can’t they just say—If it’s pre—If the photographer agrees to release image, OK, click, use, download, done.

The photographer is already granting Flickr the rights to sell the image, through whatever agreement came to.

What they’re agreeing to is a request to license. The photographer is agreeing to that.

Oh, they’re agreeing for them to get an e-mail.

Yes. And set up some pre—pre-work, so it goes quicker.

Oh, no.

What if there were stipulations, that the agreed-upon discussion or conversation was in two days or 24 hours. At least that gives you a lead-in time as to see if that’s something you would go for, or offer another option. To me, that would probably work, if I knew the parameters of what he’s agreeing to.

Now I want to—I have some specific features that I would love for you guys to just take a few minutes. If we could break off into two teams. Maybe this side of the table and this side of the table, teams of three. And if you could go through this


stack of features and sort them to what’s most important, somewhat important, and least important to you as a team. There may be a few that you can’t agree on, and that’s fine. Put them to the side. But just to get a consensus of the three of you, which ones are most, somewhat, and least, if you’re thinking about using [INAUDIBLE]. I want to explain the first one, because that one’s a little confusing. It’s called “ability to easily request to license”—Oh, sorry. It’s “ability to request a brief for a photo, as needed.” What that would mean is, if you’re on Flickr, you can request, “I need a photo of”—all the specifics. And a photographer can go and either take that photo for you or they could go through their database to see if they might have that photo already. So it’s almost like you’re writing a brief to get that photo you need, versus searching.

It’s almost like a hiring a photographer.

Yeah, through Flickr. Yeah.

That’s good. I like that.

I like that, too.

We’ll start on this side.

Maybe we should go one at a time, then. It usually takes time, like decide.

Just put them in lowest to least.

Yeah, we were just going to rearrange them—

Yeah. Yeah.

OK, well, then let’s start with these, I guess.

Just three columns: best, middle, and not so much.

We can make another column here.

We’ll go through them all.

Push them up and I can have another row.


Yeah.

More important.

Yeah.

So, yes?

Yeah.

No, it goes—

This is our most important?

So more important, less important.

This will be the “important” pile.

I think we’re going to make this [INAUDIBLE].

Yes.

All right.

It’s very important.

We don’t need that.

All right, so—

[CROSSTALK].

Sometimes I have to. I lose them.

When has that ever not been an option?

I do, too.

Maybe less important, because—

[CROSSTALK].


This can be “somewhat.” We’ll put it in column two. Let’s belay the stack as we go along.

This is our “somewhat.”

This is important—for me, at least.

Which one is it?

Licensed photos only, or Creative Commons.

This is—

I think this is only worth—like she mentioned, in the team.

Ability to create. I like this.

I like it a lot.

To see order history.

Somewhat.

Yeah, because it’s fun, but if you’re not seeing it—

I think with the web, this is—

[CROSSTALK].

Horizontal/landscape?

Somewhat. Sometimes I have to fit it in.

I would say it’s got to be “somewhat,” because we have to—it’s vertical.

This is important for me, at least. I’ve come across ones that I need just a wide—I want to filter out—

[CROSSTALK].

Gender and race.


Race.

Age, too. Sometimes you just want a specific age range.

Photos, videos, and illustrations.

No.

What is that she just told us?

Newest.

Single and multiple? For me, yes. Because I sometimes have to buy things for a slideshow.

They can get a photographer to take the picture or they will have photographers go through their database—

License and non-license at the same time.

Yeah.

Quarter of a million photos.

It’s important.

Depending on price, sure.

[CROSSTALK].

There would probably be a quick turnaround time.

We all have different jobs.

I think it would be great.

No, it’s not important.

Click on-click shopping, so you don’t have to fill-in credit card data. Of course.

Sure, yeah.


We have a problem—This is just problematic, because what’s important to him is not important to me. It’s very difficult to—

No, this is good. Let’s talk about that. To see, as a team, what would be most important—

OK. Got you.

But let’s also—When we talk through it, talk about some of the differences. But it will be interesting to see what you agree on, even if there’s only two or three.

To me, it’s all—

If it’s in the thing, I want—

Yeah.

Oh, the age—

[CROSSTALK].

Yeah, that’s all filter.

Certain price or prices. Yeah. Yeah.

To me, when I’m figuring out things for a client, that might have—

Absolutely.

We don’t want to spend $1000.

No.

Whatever.

No.

[CROSSTALK].

You said it was important to you.


Somewhat, yeah. If I have them, I have them. Some people, they need them.

I thought all of these were important, somewhat.

These aren’t vital, but they’re nice luxuries.

Sure. Of course.

Finito.

Keep photos [INAUDIBLE]. I don’t see how that’s different.

What I’m enjoying, it’s really fun, is we can have one team present and then you can tell me how different yours was. Then we can actually, after that, talk about, maybe, some of the different things from you guys. What was in the “most important” bucket?

We kind of just categorized. A lot of these overlapped. But in the “most important” was this range. I’ll move this over a little bit. “The ability to bookmark a favorite and share photos you intend to buy.” “Photos to be filtered by visual similarity.” “Find photos like this one.” Very important. “Filtering between photo, video, and illustrations.” That’s paramount, since if you don’t have a page, I don’t want to pull up stills and look at the video, vice-versa. Certainly, we discussed “photos that are new.” “The ability to share with others.” Very important. Also, in the same category, “Photos that are a certain price; price ranges.” Certainly, we’ve got budgets that we work with. “The ability to create a brief where a photo is needed,” very cool. The “search for license and non-license at the same time,” important. And the “photos from a specific photographer,” also, we found a little bit helpful.

How did that compare to yours?

Every single one of ours was parameter-based: gender, race, age, time, orientation, similarity, price, colors, requesting the type, and ability to do license only. Everything here is based on parameters of search. Versus a lot of the lifestyle ones that the other one.

Yeah. How come you felt like that was—parameters search is number one?


For me, I need—everything on here is tantamount in editorial for timely images.

I agree.

That’s just me.

No. Yeah, I fall in the same category.

So, then, I fall in the category, as well.

We just kind of take that for granted, I think. We assume we can search these photos anyway, and those are the more optional features that we thought about ranking.

Yeah, we thought were more enticing.

And with the filtering category, same thing: gender, race, age, also goes right on the same filter as what we had to sort between photo, video, and illustrations—all within the same filtering category.

What came into the “least” bucket? The less important? For you guys?

“Photos to be discovered by color or black-and-white” may be less important.

Or history.

Or vertical or horizontal, less important to me.

Order history? How come that’s less important?

I think, maybe, it’s just to give it that you just think it’s going to be sorted or categorized in a certain way, so we just didn’t think of it as a very pressing—

Yeah, how important is it—If you have an account and you signed in, you bought the photo, to go back and—Let’s say, I heard from another group, “Oh, I lost that photo. I’d really like to be able to re-access that photo.” So to be able to see my order history and go back and see my photos. How important is that?


It’s important.

Yeah, it’s important. Yeah. Yeah.

You can tag it. If there’s tagging features.

Purchase history. Yeah. Yeah.

I thought it was kind of hard to categorize it, to begin with, because they’re all important in their own aspect. It really depends on what project you’re working on, the campaign, your budget, your client, et cetera. So it was hard to find this is—It’s not like this is way more important than this, or this is irrelevant because I put this here. Certainly, filtering is—starts the search. But order history is also pretty important, too, because if you lose a photo or you need to go back to find something, you want to make sure you’re able to do that. Because then you’ve got to start all over again with the filtering process. It’s kind of hard to put these in a category, at least from my perspective.

So then you’re saying maybe the difference is not that great from your most important to your least.

Yes. Yeah.

You were able to separate them, but—

All of these are important. Maybe finding black-and-white pictures are not that important to me, but everything on this table, certainly I would find some importance for.

Savio and Tatiana, you feel the same?

Yeah, we feel like these are all pretty important and all useful.

It functions as a website, so for me, the premise is all is better. You know what I mean? I can just sort of pick and choose as to exactly what sort of definition I’d want to sort of hone into.

What about you guys? What was least?

Right here: “ability to bookmark and share photos.” “Ability to share with others.” “Photos that are popular or trending.” “Filtering between


photos and videos.” “Ability to request a licensed photo via e-mail.” “To search for licensed and unlicensed at the same time.” And “photos from a specific photographer.” I, particularly, really don’t have a need for any of this.

Yeah.

I have a need for this. I need some of this—I need illustrations, sometimes, versus photos.

That would go into the “most” for you.

I think the most irrelevant, at least the one that I thought, was the ability to favorite and bookmark.

We all agreed on that.

Yeah, just because, if you’re on a project, you’re often working—At least for us, it’s quick. Yeah, I’ll open up three tabs. I’m not going to sit there and bookmark, go back to my bookmark, and look. I forget half of my Internet bookmarks. The idea is that this could be sitting there. It’s more of a real-time experience than it is—

You guys sound very under-the-gun. That’s a little different from your—You said you had a little bit more time. You, too. You, too, Savio? You get a little bit more cushion?

I do. I’m not—The turnaround time is not as quick as theirs. That’s why I used to do work in editorials.

I’ve got—I have clients that I work for, or work with, and so I—If they are looking for something, I’ve got to turn around and give it to them.

This is really great. If you don’t mind keeping these out, because I want to take a picture of them after, so just keep them as is. But now I want to talk to you about something that’s, of course, the big topic—It’s price, right? We started to talk to you on price when we were talking about other sources you’re using, but I want to get your take on just overall with price. We talked a little bit about the size that you buy. You try to go for the largest. What role does price play in thinking about the photo size?


Definitely.

Definitely. The—

If you need a big size, you have to pay for it. But if you don’t need a big size, there’s no need to pay for the maximum. I don’t-

Right.

Are there ever times when you opt for a different size just because of the price?

Yeah. Yeah.

What about having an extended license? How important is that?

In terms of what?

Being able to—You get to use it for longer press runs, maybe more impressions, added legal protections, will warranty to it.

So if you download it, you can’t use it for certain things.

It’s more for something that you’re going to use your image for a lot of—

Multiple use?

Yeah. I don’t think I’ve heard any mentions of it in the group, but I just wondered if it’s something that you think about.

Yeah, of course. If we have to put it on social media, a lot of editorial companies do want something—

Yeah. That changes the price. Yeah.

Yeah, that changes the—that amends the contract a lot.

Now I want to hear from you—I have a few things just in respect to price. And I want to hear how these kind of fall out for you. Stick them on here, and then to move them around. One is just knowing the price ahead of time.


Very important.

Yeah.

So as early in the process as possible.

Yeah.

Very, very important.

Ability to enter your credit card for bulk for credit, so that way you’re not worrying about—

Yeah.

Then, no worries around extended uses charges. Peace of mind that images are released and cleared.

Yeah.

Very much so.

Yes.

Knowing how many times others have purchased it.

Yeah.

Then, of course, just thinking of price—the lowest price. But then, also, higher quality. So I guess I’ll just put these all here. Which ones should I bring to the top? Let’s hear a number of votes for—Which one—Ability to enter a credit card in bulk for credit?

Of course.

Would that be on the top? The middle? On the bottom?

It would be in the middle for me.

Middle.


Knowing ahead the price would—at last for me—would be number one.

Knowing the price ahead of time is number one.

Yeah, number one.

[INAUDIBLE] price and lower price would be at the top.

Lower price? An what else? There was something else?

Knowing the price ahead of time.

Knowing the price ahead of time.

Second.

Thank you. I was like, “Where did it go?” OK. What about these ones here? We have these three.

Oh, the cleared—

Yes.

Oh, yeah. Cleared.

It has to be cleared.

It’s always nice to know that no one’s coming after you.

Yes.

Oh, if you’ve ever had that, that’s horrible.

Yes. It is. It is.

That’s horrible.

I got threatened once by an estate. Was calling me to sue me. I had nothing to do with it.

I got sued by Getty.

Oh, you did?


We had an art director just lift an image off of Google, and it was like, “You can’t do that.”

Happens all the time.

I got sued by Google—or by Getty.

And how did that all come about? Were you updated on how long you had—

No, what happened was I came into the position—We had a problem in last October. I came in in December. One of our contributor writers—Our contributing editor took a photo from Google, put it on their newsletter on their website. That piece was published on our website. Getty said, “That’s our image. Here’s the proof that it’s ours.” We said, “Oh, OK.” We looked through our history, and we had the image, too. The problem they had was the fact that they put it on their newsletter. It was only allowed for our website, and nobody knew that until they sued us. Then we had to take it down. So that’s important—That is 100% important.

So definitely knowing that it’s cleared. OK, knowing how many times others have purchased it?

Not important—at least for me.

Not important.

Zero.

More in the middle, then?

No. Lower.

All the way down, yeah.

Quality?

Yes.

Yeah.


Pretty high up there.

Extended uses charges? How long do you usually need your images for? I mean, some people you have to worry about updating every year—

Depends.

When I download it, we keep them. We have a library, so we keep them.

Do you have to worry about a certain amount of time after purchasing? OK. I have two price concepts I want to run by you, just to get your reaction. Option one is one megabyte for $29, 6.6 megabytes for $79, and 22 megabytes for $149. What do you think of those prices?

Too expensive for me.

Too expensive for you? Now, is that thinking of the full size or—

I need the six—usually the six, the middle one. I’m buying more than one for a project, and my clients won’t go for that.

What would they usually—What’s their limit, typically?

I know they’ll pay—For BigStock, let’s say, I’ll buy one month and I can download five every day for like—I think a month’s subscription’s like $69, and I can get five at that. I can get the 22 meg one in that subscription.

Yeah, I think having to do it like this is ridiculous.

It’s too expensive.

It’s not even—It’s that, but having to sit there and measure out. It’s like, I didn’t realize math was involved. I majored in—My college major was pictures, not numbers—That’s what I always say. So for me, I’m looking at that.

I was a Statistics major and I still don’t know—


Right. Exactly.

Now you—This is the subscription—You both have subscriptions. Now what about the folks that don’t? What do you think of this?

I think it’s a little on the expensive side. It really would depend on what client I’m working with.

So what would you normally go for? Which size?

Usually medium.

Medium? The 6.6? And what—$79 feels high?

I mean, it’s a fair price, but again, if it’s not that important—The image is most important. If I find a good image, I’ll pay for it. But if it’s not, then I will be at the other sites. Just a generic photo of an office or something.

Yeah.

What do you guys think, over here?

I agree. Some of the clients that I’ve worked with have subscriptions, and I agree with what Adam said. I’ve worked on individual campaigns, as well, and those campaigns I’d opt, probably, for the six megabyte picture—maybe a little on the high side. But again, if it was an image that the client liked, I would make sure I would include it in the campaign and would make sure our budget accounted for it properly.

We were talking a little bit earlier about this idea of getting—paying a little bit more for a real authentic photo. How do you think that translates when actually seeing the prices?

It depends on what the photo is.

Yeah. Because you can take—You can go to Getty or any editorial site and get a beautiful picture of a baseball game. Or you can get a really high-quality photo of someone sitting in the front row. And there will be a very distinct difference between those two things. One will be included in a $2,000 a month subscription and one will be that.


[INAUDIBLE]. This is option two, and this would be for the extended license. This is what I was talking about a little earlier. This would be if your image is pretty much the center of what you’re doing, like you’re working on a huge project with long press runs, maybe tee-shirts and you need that extended use. So that would be one megabyte for $49, 6.6 megabyte for $149, and 22 megabyte of $299.

It’s too expensive.

Too expensive.

Yeah, that’s—

What would you be willing to pay? Let’s go back to just the basic. For—Let’s say the 6.6 megabyte, because that’s something that you come across a lot.

I think around $49/$50 is a pretty average price. It’s a fair price.

What if you knew—Just another side. The other side. That the photographers were getting 51% royalty, and that’s one of the reasons why the price is what it is.

I think that’s great, but it still doesn’t impact me.

Yeah.

The split is still coming out of either my budget or a client’s budget.

Even though it’s higher than some of the others, like Getty and Corbis—I think they pay from 20% to 40% royalty?

That, to me—I’ve never seen that in a contract, so—When we sign our Getty contract every year, that’s irrelevant. It’s not even included.

So at the end of the day, does that matter?

No.

No.

Not to me.


I’m a big fan of photographers getting their fair share of money, but it’s—Again, based on the parameters of clients’ budgets, et cetera, I’m going to try to, obviously, get as much as I can for the least amount of money.

The subscription model that I’ve had experience with, we’re paying account X $2,500 a month and there’s 100 downloads. Account Y is $2,300 and it’s 75 downloads. And this is the highest possible quality of editorial. And that’s—We have usage of that. We don’t have to sit there and think about it. We can use it wherever we want. Editorially, obviously, but we have the ability to do that, based—And we pay X amount a month. Now, granted, I work for a larger public company, but that’s—That kind of ability of my buffet of images is there.

There. OK. That makes sense. So now that you’ve seen the overall mock-ups. We’ve talked a little bit about the light room—light box. I call it “light room.” Light box. And all the different pricing schemes. I guess I want to hear from you what do you think of the idea of Flickr Stock as a photo stock source for you? When you first heard me say it, what were your initial thoughts?

I like it as—if it’s offering me something that these others don’t have. I’m all for that.

What do you think so far? Just seeing what you saw about the rough ideas of the content and the search—does it feel different?

It feels different. All the interface certainly does feel different. I really care about what the content is going to be.

Yeah.

That’s the bottom line, basically, because they offer, pretty much, a certain look, a certain content. For this to stand out and actually really make me go here, unless the images are dirt cheap, I don’t see a reason for me to just go on Flickr license and purchase from them. But if their content is more unique, fresher, less posed—all the things that we spoke about here—definitely, I will be going there.


At the end of the day, you want to find your image. For me, it’s finding new stuff and not the same stuff that’s on—That’s why I asked you about the exclusive photographers. It’s really important, because we’re all finding—I’m sure we’re all finding the same images on all these different sites.

Yeah.

It’s very frustrating.

Yeah, for paying for it—Let’s say there is a subscription-based model, it would be if there’s something very, very different about it. Something that can be used that’s—Is it worth the money? Is buying a month’s subscription for 100 or 200 or 1000 images worth it? ThinkStock, we pay for a monthly subscription. It is unlimited for what we use. We can—whatever we want. Would this be the same thing?

They let you download as many as you want?

Yeah.

Because I think I was limited to 50.

I’ll write it down how much it is, and it’s unlimited for us, for a month.

Now I want you guys to put your creative hats on. We can use the same teams that you guys had before. I want you to—I’m going to give you some information about Flickr Stock. Pretty much everything we already covered. But just small, little—not really tag lines, but just features and put in a way that’s a little more marketing focused. I want you, as a team, to pull together a one- or a two-minute—what would we call it? Elevator pitch. You’re in the elevator and you have to sell it to the other team. Imagine—First of all, you’re thinking about why would you use Flickr, right? Try to think about what features are the most compelling, or the items are most compelling to sell to get the other team to go for Flickr Stock. I have, here, a board to kind of help you out, because this is always a little tricky to do. In your three-minute pitch—And you can write this here, grab a marker and write this out, because I’m going to give you a few minutes to think it through. You can say, “This Flickr Stock provides—It’s different from other sources,” Like all the other ones we were talking about,


“because. And you need to sign up tomorrow because—“Thinking of these three things, you can frame your five-minute pitch or two-minute pitch.

And the answers are these choices?

Pulling these little things for your three-minute thing. I made a board for you guys, too. You can just write it out and then we’ll kind of present it to each other. I made a board, here, for you guys. Same thing here. You guys can write it out. I’m going to move this. You guys can grab a marker and then just write it—Same thing. Does that seem clear?

Should we write the letter of our section? Or actually write out the sentence?

Oh, yeah, you can just put the letter, and also we’ll talk through it. You can read it off when you do the three-minute pitch.

OK.

After you kind of go through it on your own, if you could come together and just write it there. [INAUDIBLE]. Steve, I don’t know if you saw, you guys have your own board here.

Yes, I did. Thank you. Can I ask a question, though?

Yes, of course. I was going to say, “Do you guys have any questions?”

Is there any concern with removing the watermarks for the people that are logged in, for photo theft?

That’s a great question.

Because you can just screen shot that.

Easily. Of course.

The whole idea would be that, if you are—That’s one. You just need to take it. But if you’re logged in and fully registered, Flickr can monitor your downloads. Then they can do audits


every so often, to make sure that they can protect the photographers. The reason why, leaning towards the watermark, is just because of what you mentioned. It’s so much easier, as a buyer, to share work with your potential clients. Great. So feel free to write it out. I’ll give you a few minutes. Any other questions?

I went through the top ones.

So you and I have B and C, but I have A and you have B.

A, B, and C.

[CROSSTALK].

You’re right. Exactly.

[CROSSTALK].

But I need that for my mock-ups.

That’s very interesting. I didn’t know that. How they require—

Because I’m dealing with people that are unprofessional, so they don’t understand that [CROSSTALK].

I worked with someone who had no idea what dummy type was. Yes, and she saw the mock-up and she was like, “That ain’t what I wrote.” She’s like, “That’s not what I wrote,” and we all looked at her like, “You’ve got to be kidding.” Yeah.

B is not important to me. Well, I guess that’s not even it.

All this other stuff. The community [INAUDIBLE]—that’s, yeah.

I don’t need that.

OK, how are doing here with our elevator pitch?

Good.

Yeah.


Yeah? Did you guys want to write your letters underneath, so we can talk through it? Feel free—You could just write the letters of the statements, and then we’ll talk through it.

We agreed on what?

A, B, and C.

A, B, and C.

[CROSSTALK].

A, C, B.

Flickr is different because of A.

You’re getting B and you want to sign up because of C.

A.

B. C.

OK.

OK. So let’s hear. So Flickr Stock provides—Walk us through this. I’ll be like the audience and you’ll do the pitch of your three—

So Flickr Stock provides a useful tool to visually search, while being able to search a tightly created collection of non-stock-looking imagery. Flickr is different from others because content is fresh, original, and edgier than ShutterStock, Getty Images, and so on. You need to sign up tomorrow because it’s a simple license that’s easy to understand, pricing that’s not complicated, transparent and high-value, compared to competition.

What made you pick those three things in the pitch?

Well, the first one, I think, because it explains the service best. A. What makes it different is the photography itself, I think, so that’s why we picked C. And B because that’s actually about some of the use.

The license?


The licensing, the process of how [INAUDIBLE] and things.

And that’s something we didn’t really get to go into. That’s something that’s important, still. OK. Great. Great. Great. Just one that we didn’t go into every single element of. OK, let’s hear from your side.

Flickr, yeah, simple license that’s easy to understand, pricing that’s not complicated, transparent, high-value compared to competition. Flickr is different because it’s a useful tool to visually stretch while being able to search a tightly curated collection of non-stock-looking imagery. And you need to sign up tomorrow because content is fresh, original, edgier than ShutterStock, Getty Images, et cetera.

So we really had the same ones come through.

Yeah. Yeah.

Differentiating was different, because it was about the search. Whereas here, it was more about the seamless [INAUDIBLE]. It was the content. Do you think search is a differentiator or content?

Content.

Content.

Yeah, content.

But then also, would it be the way to get to the content, too?

Yes.

Yeah.

Oh, definitely. Content is what’s going to attract me to Flickr. Once you have me there, all this is just an add-on. But the reason I’ll be going there is because you are different.

Well, the search affects the content you see, so it really is hand-in-hand.


Hand-in-hand. OK. No, that makes complete sense. So do you have any advice? This is something that’s going to come into play later this year. Any advice for Flickr Stock? Just in being so close with purchasing photo stock every day?

Advice in?

In respect to hearing all this about the rough—rough flow, how it would look, how the search would be, some of these features?

It’s one thing to see everything on paper, which is a great forum, as we’re sitting around discussing this. But it’s another thing to actually see it in use. And I’m sure there are plans—

Beta—

To Beta test this. But at the same token, if I’m searching and an image is not popping up. It can look beautiful. Or if it’s really expensive, then that can turn me off. If the search engine is not as robust as the other type of competitors out there, that can be a big factor in terms of making my decision as to where to look.

Pricing. Subscription model. Multiple photos for a month, for a monthly fee, and unlimited usage. The rights, clearance, pre-clearance, ready-to-go. Buy it, go. I don’t want to have to sit there and wait. Sign it. Just buy it.

No worries.

Buy my subscription. This is what you have. You can use it unlimitedly. Go.

Yeah.

Since this is a newer thing, is this something you want to do a subscription to right away? Or would you want to buy by photo, to see if—

If I can, I would go subscription—

You go subscription?


Because the budget is there.

Right off the bat. Right out the gate.

Really?

Yeah.

If I found images that I—For me, it’s healthcare. So if I saw a lot of different stethoscopes, I would buy a subscription.

Or give a five medium photo trial.

Yeah, exactly.

I trust them.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

I would at least want to see that the photos are there, first, before I have my company or individually pay for a subscription-based service. But once—If I can find those general pictures, then, actually, a subscription-based service is a no-brainer decision.

For me—I don’t know how much [INAUDIBLE] for everyone else. I’m like everyone else: I’m mostly concerned with what image I find and what my budget is, but if I got the sense that it was more like DeviantArt or some other website, where they take a profit to make the sale—In other words, the photographers are making a slightly larger percentage, like 65% or 60%, I would feel like I’m actually supporting the arts. Whereas, a half-and-half percentage still makes me feel like it’s a business; photographers make a cut, but it doesn’t feel like I’m going there to support, directly, photographers.

Who do you think it would—When I mentioned the 51% being, really, one of the most high—I mean, comparing to these other ones. What did you think of that?

Again, I don’t know if my ideas are even feasible. I don’t know anything about the background of this, but I thought it’s good, because it’s a step up for what photographers have an option for. But I also thought it’s not the greatest, because if I was a photographer, knowing the cost of that, I would prefer it over the other ones that are paying 20% to


40%. But as a consumer, I wouldn’t necessarily think that photographers getting half is necessarily the best business for them. Maybe I’m wrong.

No, that’s fair. Another thing I want to get your take on is the whole name, Flickr Stock. What do you think of the name?

I think it’s fine. You already have a brand in Flickr. You have the regular Flickr, and then Flickr Stock. To me, it says immediately what it is.

Yeah, Flickr Stock, different from Creative Commons. It’s already differentiated.

Yeah.

You’ll get your past consumers and you’ll get new ones that are coming in, like myself. I’ve searched on Flickr. Again, I’ve not found anything for my content that I need, but I would definitely give it a try, and I’m sure most designers would, if they think that they’re going to find an image of—special image. My advice has been, throughout this whole session, you need to make sure that you tell people, “We have different images than everybody else.” And that’s how you have to market it. That’s really what I’m looking for.

Different images.

Because I buy so many. I need something different.

Yeah.

Would knowing some of the photographers could opt in and do the exclusive sell for 90 days, would that make a difference to you, too? I mentioned that earlier.

Not really.

No.

No.

That’s great. Any other thoughts about the name from this side? Flickr Stock?


I think you need to definitely incorporate the name Flickr. Obviously, you’ve got a brand. And certainly “stock” is what you’re selling. So yeah, it’s pretty good. I’d have to give it some serious brainstorming to think of something that’s different and more creative. But yeah, it works.

It goes right to the point.

Right.

You know what you’re getting.

And it’s what it is.

Great. Well, thank you guys. You’ve been so wonderful.

Thank you.

Yeah. Let me just check with the back room. Any last questions? Otherwise, I think we’re pretty set.

Do you need our homework? Or—

Yes. How about—When I go in the back, if you don’t mind writing your name on the homework, because a lot of them are kind of mixing together last time. Write your name. And then, if you could also write your name on the notepad that you wrote some of your initial impressions.

Oh, I didn’t really write too much.

I didn’t write down much, either.

That’s OK. Even if it’s just one line, it’s still great.

OK.

Thank you guys. You’re all set. They’re fine. We’re all good. You guys have been wonderful. Have a good rest of your evening.

Thank you.


Thanks for coming all the way out in the cold.

I wish you luck with your project.

Thank you very much.

And I look forward to it, definitely, once you launch it.

I’ll be watching.

Yeah.

We’ll be waiting for it.

[INAUDIBLE].

Good luck.

Thank you guys. Have a good rest of the night.

Thank you.

[INAUDIBLE].

Thank you.

I have a lot on my ears. I don’t know if anybody else just [INAUDIBLE].

Yeah, I’m the same way. You guys have got to take at least 10 minutes, so.

But you live in LA, so you don’t really have this kind of weather.

No, we don’t. So I don’t actually have good winter wear, so I just brought five extra sweaters.

Right. My cousin lives in [INAUDIBLE], Florida. They got down to like 40 degrees one night. She said, “I have no coat. I have nothing.

Yeah.


But I’m a Brooklyn girl, so I’ve been doing this for—My family has been here since 1851.

Oh, I love it. Then you’re all ready for it. This is not cold compared to other ones.

This has been horrible for us.

Yes. It’s crazy. Well, I hope it gets warmer. The vortex is—

The vortex and all this other nonsense. I wanted to ask you, how do we get the fee that—

Oh, they set you up all when you’re on your way out. When you sign out, they’ll take care of you.

Great.

They’ll get you all set.

Thank you so much.

You’re welcome.

Tom wanted us to call him. Do you have a few minutes?

Yes. I have to [INAUDIBLE].

OK, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So it’ll take me ten minutes.

OK. Yes.

[Transcribed by AML/IK]

05 yahoo flickr nyc 012214 530pm group 1 high buyers

Documents

thats good

photo stock discussion

thing thats

pm group

honest feedback

new york date

different things

focus group