Technovia

Why the Getty/Flickr deal is a good thing

Thomas Hawk gives some great details of the deal between Getty and Flickr, which will see Getty create a new collection, pulled from Flickr. This means that Flickr photographers - or at least the better ones - will have a chance to sell their images, something that's going to be good for them.

There's been some criticism of the deal on FriendFeed, but I think it's great. I use Getty to buy images a lot, and the reason is simple: their tools for discovering and finding images make it quicker and easier than spending hours trawling through Flickr.

Their tagging and categorisation is consistent, which means I get fewer false results, which means less wasted time - and my time is expensive. So a system which pulled images from Flickr and ensured that the tagging and categorisation was consistent and professionally done would be something well worth paying for.

This is something that people who don't buy stock photographs professionally very rarely get. The quality of the images is only part of the story. Yes, there are great quality images on Flickr, and I could email the photographer and give them a rate which would be much less than going to Getty or whoever.

But unless I got lucky, I might take an entire morning to find it - which, when you look at what my time costs, isn't worth it.

And that highlights where the value is in stock libraries, and how tools like Flickr aren't going to be killing off the stock photography business model soon. The real value isn't just in the images: it is in the metadata that surrounds them. And crowdsourcing, which can be used for many things, is generally poor at producing consistency in metadata.

It's not OK to steal content, even if you're The Daily Mail

Back when I was a proper journo, I went on a course about media law. One of the basics - the very, very basic elements - was that all pictures are copyrighted and you are likely to get sued if you just grab one and use it. For photographers, pictures are their living and they don't take kindly to having them taken without paying.

When untrained individuals grab an image, that's understandable. Copyright law is not something taught in schools, and a lot of people presume that because you can right-click on a picture and "save as..." it's ok to do so. They're wrong, of course, but being wrong because you don't know any better is at least understandable.

For a professional publication to do the same thing, though, isn't just a mistake: it's corporate theft. And that's why The Daily Mail stealing Giles Turnbull's photo isn't something that should be treated lightly.

I'm hoping that Charles Arthur, who's been (rightly) vocal about web sites stealing The Guardian's content, will pick up on this too. After all, we're not talking about peanuts here: the cost of buying an image like Giles' from a picture library could be several hundred pounds.

Free dailies - still not a "bright light" in the newspaper industry

More evidence that, despite Chris Anderson's claims, free may be less of a viable business model than people expect, as Roy Greenslade reports that News International may be shutting thelondonpaper:

"Rumours are rife that News International, now run by James Murdoch, may be about to close down thelondonpaper, claims The Observer media diary (not online). According to the item, 'there are signs' that Associated's rival freesheet, London Lite, 'may be winning its rearguard action'. One of those signs is that thelondonpaper 'is no longer being handed out at several tube stations.'"

And, I'll note again, the profoundly not-free Economist seems to be doing rather well for itself...

Technorati Tags:
Chris Anderson, Journalism, Newspapers, The Economist, thelondonpaper

Why Andy Ihnatko is a really good writer

Because he comes out with stuff like this:

“Setting up a server is like playing an old Infocom adventure. It’s an endless series of puzzles and even when you think you’ve solved them all…you’re eventually totally screwed because three months ago, you didn’t FEED CHEESE SANDWICH TO DOG.”

…in a blog post. A blog post that NO ONE IS PAYING HIM FOR. Giving away good lines like this is a piece of largesse that other freelance writers would baulk at, trust me.

Technorati Tags: Andy Ihnatko,writing

Print is dying, right? Not so fast

Don't expect this story to get coverage from those who always seem to be claiming that print media is dying. The Economist, the venerable newspaper (which looks like a magazine) has seen revenues, profits and print circulation all rise:

"The Economist Group's chief executive, Helen Alexander, has signed off from her 11-year leadership of the publisher by unveiling a 16pc rise in American print advertising for its flagship title and a 23pc increase in operating profit.

The Economist's double-digit growth comes at a time when US news media have been under pressure. Time magazine, the market leader with 3.3m readers, saw sales fall away sharply last year as prices were increased to make up for falling advertising revenues... The Economist's circulation has doubled in a decade, including a 9pc spurt last year to 1.3m copies a week."

Of course, some of those healthy profits have to do with The Economist's web site. But even here, it bucks the trend: rather than make everything available for free, its archives are only available to subscribers or readers who have to sit through an irritating Flash ad.

Of course, The Economist's print strategy is simple: steal a bigger slice of the smaller pie. Rather than just run to a growing market (online advertising), it has decided to also concentrate on getting a bigger share of print advertising, too.

How does it do it? Simple: By producing content that's better quality, better-researched, and better written than anyone else. No blogs, no Twitter, just better (and harder) work.

Will the success story of The Economist be taught in journalism schools? I doubt it. The new, shiny and cool tends to be more exciting to those in college than dull stuff like writing to a tight style, making lots of phone calls and nurturing contacts.

But hey, that's enough of this curmudgeonliness - let's concentrate on things like Twitter, which has a bigger user-base (1.9 million) and has never made a single cent from any of them. Now that's a success story that the young ought to emulate...

An example of bad, sexist summary writing

Stewart Butterfield and his wife?

Referring to Caterina as "his wife" is pretty lame. Have we gone back to the 1970's, when women were defined by their relationship to men rather than their achievements? I really would expect better from The Guardian.

Die, Adobe, die!

Back in the mid-1990's, everyone in the design world hated one company with a passion: Quark. If you wanted to do professional print publishing, you had to use QuarkXPress. And Quark knew it, fleecing its customers with absurd pricing, adding on onerous conditions, and even at one point dongling its products.

Then along came Adobe InDesign. InDesign 1.0 wasn't as good as QuarkXPress, but to print publishers who were fed up with Quark's attitude to its customers, it didn't matter: they switched, as soon as they could. Quark realised that it no longer had its customers in an arm-lock too late, and despite getting its act together, lost a lot of sales.

There's an old saying that those who fail to learn the lessons of history are condemned to repeat its mistakes, and this is as true for software publishers as anyone else. And it appears Adobe, of all companies, simply doesn't understand the lesson that it taught Quark.

How much do you think Photoshop costs? The answer, if you're an American customer, is a whopping $649. It gets worse if you're a European customer. In the UK - and without even taking into account VAT - you will pay nearly $1000 more for a copy of Creative Suite Premium compared to the US. Just the difference between the US and UK versions equates to the price of two copies of Logic Studio ($499 each) or nearly the cost of Final Cut Studio 2. If anyone from Adobe would care to explain why it costs more for me to download a product in the UK than it does to download the same code from the same servers in the US then I'd love to hear about it.

In other words, Adobe is simply gouging its customers because it knows that, if you want to do professional image manipulation, you have to use Photoshop. Like Quark, it knows that there isn't another option and is pricing accordingly.

But, of course, this means that the first company which comes along with an alternate - even if it doesn't quite match up to Photoshop's feature set - is likely to clean up. And Adobe will deserve it. Roll on the Photoshop alternatives.

When thinking about copyright, remember what Lessig says

Larry Lessig, Free Culture:

"A free culture is not a culture without property; it is not a culture in which artists don't get paid. A culture without property, or in which creators can't get paid, is anarchy, not freedom."

Poor, FORTUNE

In its blog post on the shuttering of Think Secret FORTUNE magazine manages to miss the point quite nicely:

"The case drew national attention because it raised important questions about press freedom and whether First Amendment protections extend to blogs."

It might have "raised important questions" about blogs - but only in the minds of people obsessed with the distinction between journalism and blogging. In fact, it was clear from the start the Nick Ciarelli followed journalistic method far more effectively than many so-called professional journalists. The fact that Think Secret was an online-only publication with dated stories was the only resemblance it had with most blogs.

"At the time, Apple was apparently unaware that “Nick dePlume” Think Secret’s publisher, was an undergraduate at Harvard. Nicholas Ciarelli was 13 when he launched the website from his parents’ home in upstate New York."

If Apple really was unaware of this, then it was the only part of the Mac industry that had missed out on this obvious fact. I met Nick in press rooms at quite a few Macworld shows, and I find it absolutely impossible to believe that Apple wasn't aware of his age.

In praise of Think Secret

Anyone coming to the Mac in the past couple of years won’t have seen Think Secret during its heyday, when editor-in-chief (and owner, and reporter, and bottle-washer) Nick “dePlume” Ciarelli was running the site on a day-to-day basis. Since Nick decamped for Harvard, the site has effectively been on hold, which makes its demise less important than it once would have been.

In its day, though, Think Secret wasn’t just a Mac web site: if you wanted to know the inside story of Apple and its forthcoming products, it was the only web site you needed to read. The key thing about Think Secret - and the bit that made it work - was that Nick didn’t just publish anything that got emailed to him. He was a good reporter, and that meant that everything which went on the site was confirmed by at least two independent sources.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that every story was correct: stories can reverberate inside a company before they emerge, at different points, and still be wrong. And, with advanced product information, plans can change pretty quickly: I’ve been given advanced information on product plans from excellent sources within Apple the day before a product is announced, only to find the information changes prior to launch. When reporting on what a company will release in several months time, even if you are assiduous about sourcing, you’ll get more misses than hits.

Ironically, Nick’s finest story appeared not on Think Secret, but on eWeek, when in collaboration with MacWEEK veteran Matthew Rothenberg he revealed the existence of Marklar, the top secret Apple project to port Mac OS X to Intel. Both had been working on the story for months, gathering details and confirming the project’s existence with as many sources as possible.

I was tangentially involved in later iterations of the Marklar story, as Nick asked me to see if I could dig anything up about a little company called Transitive, which he’d heard was working with Apple on a PowerPC to Intel code system. I couldn’t find anything, Nick never got his corroboration - and so Rosetta remained a secret until the announcement of the Intel transition.

For three years after the original story, until Apple announced it was, in fact, switching to Intel, both Nick and Matthew were accused on a daily basis by groups of Mac zealots of making the story up. Even commentators who should have known better gave the story little credence, claiming that the different architectures meant PowerPC code performance would be appalling, and thus Apple would never do it.

Sadly, its not possible to go back to every one of the (largely anonymous) commenters who accused them of being “brain dead” (at best) and make them eat a large slice of humble pie, but I’d imagine that both Nick and Matthew had a wry smile on their faces when the Intel transition happened.

Those who characterise Think Secret as “a rumors [sic] site” are, unknowingly, following a specific Apple PR line which started back in the late 1990’s. The aim of the campaign was to draw a line between what Apple saw as “legitimate” news outlets and “rumours sites”, which published things which Apple didn’t want its customers to hear about. I was told directly on one occasion by an Apple PR executive that I didn’t want to publish a story because it would get MacUser, where I then worked, categorised as a rumours site “and you don’t want that to happen”.

Whether it was meant this way or not, the implication I took at that time was clear: publish stories about forthcoming Apple products, even if accurate, and Apple would stop co-operating with my magazine. We didn’t change our behaviour, and the threat was never acted upon, but there’s no doubt that Apple had decided that there were two kinds of press: those who were “with” Apple, and those who were “against” it. And “against” simply meant publishing information which Apple didn’t want you to know about. Those people who, today, refer to “black PR” campaigns against Apple should know that their beloved company is no stranger to using PR as a weapon.

Look around the Mac media landscape today, and what do you find? Sites which are simple aggregations of press releases. Sites which report anything that an anonymous emailer sends in. How to’s, reviews, commentary (some good, some bad). And, of course, the sites whose sole priority is to put a positive spin for Apple on any news, even to the point of interpreting statistics in ways which are, frankly, insane.

What you don’t have is real, traditional technology reporting on Apple, of the kind which seeks not to sensationalise but to get underneath the skin of the company. To get inside the company, rather than observe it from the outside. Real reporting like this takes time and experience. It means working on stories for months, sometimes years, and that’s not cheap. In a free market, readers get the press that they deserve - or rather, that they’re prepared to pay for. No one is prepared to pay a living wage for one brilliant story a week anymore - but that’s another blog post in itself.

The loss of Think Secret as it is today was probably, for Nick, no big deal. Long-gone from the regular Mac reporting scene, his career as a reporter is only just beginning and we’ll undoubtedly hear from from him in the future. I hope that he chooses tech reporting, but given the way that the technology publishing market has gone, I doubt that he will. Real reporting, as opposed to regurgitating press releases and following the PR line, is largely done elsewhere these days.

(NOTE: For some background on the Think Secret case, take a look at my posts "Why the Think Secret case is being overplayed, by everyone" and "Rothenberg on Think Secret", both from March 2005.)

Technorati Tags:
Apple, Think Secret, Nick dePlume