Citizen Photographers: Flickr's Opportunity with Getty Images

Implications: Flickr photographers dream of the big break - and that big break is getting both attention and money for their images.  So Getty Images is giving substance to that dream.  Flickr was right to make the deal: it energizes their users and upgrades their offering with a new veneer of professional viability.  Flickr is not the same as Getty's microstock arm, iStockphoto.  Flickr covers a broad range of personal tastes and agendas, while iStockphoto is calculated to sell popular images enough times for the fees to add up.  On iStockphoto expect lots of happy couples, cute children, and business metaphors.  Flickr users take pictures when something interesting happens, and post the good ones.  There is overlap, of course, but the aims are different, and so are the results.

Analysis: Getty Images has thousands of photographers already.  Why do they need a fresh perspective from Flickr?  The key is probably geographic.  If you have cute puppy pix on Flickr, don't run to the bank just yet.  If you have gritty pictures of life in the developing world, images that are hard for a conventional professional photographer to get, that may be your ticket to Getty sales.  There are two factors at work here.  First, there is a vast oversupply of cliche photos, because not everyone is clever enough to offer an artistic perspective on things we see every day.  Second, if we see something every day, it isn't much use in an ad: it is unlikely to grab our attention.  Images of smiling people walking on a sidewalk are not going to command a high price, whether they are on Getty or on Flickr.  Expect the best handful of images from Flickr's more unusual and far-flung photographers to make the grade.  And expect thousands more to be inspired to try harder, not a bad effect at all.