This week, Getty will launch Thinkstock, a subscription-based royalty-free image service that combines RF images from Getty and Jupiter with iStockphoto images. In other words, there is now absolutely no difference in price between professionally-created RF images and user-generated microstock. Read all about it in this British Journal of Photography piece.
Earlier this week, Veer announced a similar project, which led me to consider the future of professional stock photographers.
I used to work alongside the ADs for TS before the acquisition. There seemed to be such a conflict between making the TS RF images stand out as “different” than microstock while at the same time making them generic enough to compete with MS. It was such a strange balancing act that obviously did not succeed. Sad.