Shutterstock was the first company to download a 250 million-volume breakthrough.

Shutterstock was the first company to download a 250 million-volume breakthrough. The latest data show that 2 Shutterstock pictures are sold per second.

In the network era, everyone can publish works, so millions of images are full of boundless mass information Network world. And how Shutterstock from the amateur photographer platform to grow into network map Kudahen, for all aspects of our lives to serve the visual feast?

Started out on self-study photography

The image gallery, a concept that provides pictures for publishers and other customers, has emerged in the 20 's. But the digital age has spawned a term called Tutuku (microstock), a Web image that anyone can buy and use cheaply and royalty-free, with amateur photographers and artists.

The first micro-Tutuku company iStockPhoto was founded in 2000 (six years later, at a price of 50 million U.S. dollars Getty Images Acquisition). In the 2003, Jon Oringer, a 29-year-old entrepreneur, envisioned a combination of a picture crowdsourcing market and a subscription based business model that really propelled the market to its peak. Shutterstock offers low-cost images to bloggers, the media and businesses of all sizes. The supply side has been spurred by a surge of demand, with contributors flocking to offer their work to a platform with a high volume of acquisitions.

Today, Shutterstock, the CEO and chairman of Oringer, has 24 million royalty-free pictures, illustrations, vector graphics and video clips. The website is available in 14 languages and offers 35,000 contributors from 100 countries. In a booming industry, Shutterstock is the first company to download 250 million of the volume, with the latest data showing 2 Shutterstock images sold per second. Oringer said Shutterstock was the first in the field of commercial digital image supply, leading the Getty Images and Istockphto. Its customers are up to 500,000, including Google, CBS, Morgan Stanley and independent producers, among others.

At the beginning of the 2003 Oringer start-up did not expect the company will have today's scale. Like countless innovators before him, he was just trying to solve a problem. After creating 10 of them in a row, he noticed that mail with pictures and real-time newsletters always brought high traffic. At first, however, Oringer can only obtain high-quality images from clipart CDs, or from galleries such as Getty and Corbis, to obtain a high price, suitable for a specific range of copyright images.

At this point, Oringer keenly aware of a market loophole, and the timing was right-the price of a professional high-quality camera had fallen below $1000 trillion. He took a decisive approach and, in the next nine months, studied photography with great concentration, he said: "I have no direction at all, so I can try the type of photography." "His work includes a dog with a newspaper (which is his personal bestseller) and a café scene where he works. He took 100,000 photos, uploaded the best 30,000, and sold unlimited access subscriptions for 49 dollars.

As a result, Oringer found that he was not the only one who needed these pictures. At this point he was unable to satisfy a large amount of demand, he decided to expand the scale. Oringer created the Shutterstock platform, and anyone can provide pictures. By 2007, Shutterstock had been able to provide 2 million pictures. 2008, Insight venture Capital injected an unknown amount of money to help the company continue to expand its size. By the year 2009, Shutterstock bought the Tutuku company Bigstock at a low price of 3.3 million dollars in cash.

It was then that Oringer began to consider listing, and he recalls: "When I saw that we were growing, I was thinking about which way to go to maximize the opportunity." "The October 2012 IPO, the first technology company from New York in nearly two years, raised 76.5 million dollars." He said: "We are listing to expand the size of the company, financing to become the leader in this emerging industry." But I am also constantly asking myself if I can keep the original. We sounded the alarm for ourselves, and it was the same company. ”

Bring the gospel to the map-seekers

It was a cool morning in January, looking out from the office of the Oringer, located on the 34 floor of the Manhattan Financial district, to see the Statue of Liberty clearly. He sits on two big-screen monitors, wears sneakers and some pleated buckle shirts, and looks laid-back. "When I started the company, people had a lot of ideas about the industry," he said. But our uniqueness is the simplicity of the subscription model, and we always position ourselves as a technology company. ”

This business model has achieved significant results. In the third quarter of 2012, the latest data available at the time of the IPO, Shutterstock's revenue rose 36% per cent to $42.3 million trillion, with tax depreciation and amortisation earning up to $10.3 million trillion. The company plans 2012 revenue to reach $165 million trillion and adjust earnings to $33 million.

Investors have also noticed growing demand for online images. In May 2012, Fotolia, a rival of Shutterstock, announced a 150 million dollar investment from the private investment group, and in August, Carlyle Group, a private equity firm, bought Getty Images at a price of $3.3 billion. In a sponsorship study, Shutterstock said that by 2016 the market value of "pre-shot commercial digital Images" (commercial digital photographs) would reach $6 billion trillion.

After the IPO, Oringer still owns a majority stake in the company and continues to run Shutterstock. "Most of the listed companies are no longer run by founders because the financial structure dilutes their stakes, and there is more and more interference in their operations," he said. ”

Oringer did not like to sit honestly, his legs on another chair, dragging his chair back and forth. His plan for Shutterstock growth was also endless, keeping supply and demand growing at the same pace. "There is no feed that annoys buyers," he said. From the start I wanted to keep the platform as automated as possible, because computers can tell people what they need more quickly. ”

In order to obtain the "network effect" of Oringer, Shutterstock collected a lot of data about the content, time and reason of the picture buying and selling, and created a perfect system to serve the feedback circle of each side. The initial search feature supports image search based on number, gender, or ethnicity, and can provide search results in different scenarios based on personal location and browsing history.

Shutterstock offers an on-demand pricing mechanism with a minimum of $19 per picture. Another kind of senior agreement for sale and mass printing, the minimum of 199 dollars. But the company's main revenue comes from subscriptions, with a minimum of 249 dollars a month. Each download contributor can generally profit from 25 to 38 cents-the higher the income threshold, the higher the pay. The pictures used by the big clients, the contributors can get paid 30%, about the equivalent of 120 dollars per picture. The highest-earning contributors can earn up to six digits a year.

The pictures are subject to rigorous scrutiny. Oringer admits: "The quality of the photos I've taken from the front is definitely not going to make sense today." "Although the site welcomes anyone applying (or repeating applications) to submit photos, only 20% of the photos can eventually be passed through the review process." Of course, there are 10 photos uploaded, at least 7 have been approved by the inspector to appear.

For business-minded artists, Shutterstock may be an opportunity to change their lives. Alisa Foytik is a popular vector illustration painter. When she was a contributor for 2006 years, she was an art student at a Russian university. Then she sold hundreds of pictures, enough to make her move to England and then to Washington. "I can't believe that nobody has ever thought that before," she said, "because it's so hard to be an artist and work for a big company like Getty." ”

Lev Radin, a photography enthusiast from New York, joined Shutterstock in 2006. He believes it is Shutterclock's help for the contributors that makes it unique in the industry. With the support of Shutterstock, he was given the qualification to cover the United States open and red carpet activities. He also has an account on another gallery site (Oringer supports such behavior), but he said: "I don't think any other company can offer me that much help." I approached some of them, but none of the companies gave me a response like shutterstocky. ”

Theodore Agranat, founder of Ceonex, a web development design company, believes Shuttterstock has brought the gospel to the image contributors. "The company has taken the lead in the democratization of the industry, and for amateurs, the photographic industry has been unattainable," he said. But at the same time, he points out, the interests of professional photographers have been undermined by the general reluctance of content providers to buy "pretty big pictures" at high prices. In his view, the use of galleries also poses another risk to the industry – low standard brand reputation. "Unless you are exceptionally lucky, the gallery is constantly being updated in accordance with existing patterns, rather than creating a brand that you want to launch entirely." But like other industries, we can only adjust and adapt to this risk. ”

The Secret of innovation

At Shutterstock headquarters, about 200 employees (and more will join) spread over the four-storey building. There's a screen in the lobby downstairs that shows the world map, shows the Shutterstock of real-time downloads, the elevators are printed with the photos provided by the contributors; the long grey sofa in the hallway is holding a meeting, where the employees have a nap when they have a marathon brainstorming session on new products and services development.

"We want employees to make recommendations for changes in the industry," he said. "Product vice President Wyatt Jenkins said. Regardless of the size of the development, the company's operating system must always ensure that it provides a flexible and innovative environment. About 40% of the employees are in charge of products and technology, the company's operations are roughly divided into 12 teams, each team has a core task, they are like the independent pioneer Company for the same target running, including marketing, design or sales. At the "Competition show" (Sprint demos), which is held every two months, departments gather to showcase their responsibilities.

Dan McCormick and David Chester are the first two designers that Oringer also hired to handle customer service. Now, they are senior VP and chief designer of the company respectively. Both acknowledge that the reason for staying in the company so far is Oringer's excellent leadership and commitment to flexible development.

From a development point of view, working in Shutterstock is like dreaming. The company is essentially a large database that comes with an equally large user database. Together, they are expected to deal with some of the most difficult problems in the search functional area. McCormick explains: "The algorithms we create are designed to deliver the perfect picture." His team's lab tools reshape the traditional method of image search. For example, Instant is a new visual brainstorming tool that uses the pending patent (patent-pending) algorithm to point to real-time images each time the keyboard is tapped. Another tool spectrum uses a mechanical device that is triggered by sliding controls on the DJ turntable to search for information based on color feedback.

Although listed companies generally do not have the best innovation, but we have reason to believe that Shutterstock will remain innovative vitality, one of the reasons is Oringer himself. He is always early aware of and offers fresh tricks, and the most recent example is the growing need for video Clip Gallery. "The market is not big when we start in 2005, because both the equipment and the processing capacity are high," he said. But I knew then that in the near future video production would be the same as the picture. So we learned how to use different kinds of formats and wait for the right time. Now, the video gallery is one of our millions of dollars worth of business. ”

Indeed, Lee Torrens, from Melbourne, Australia, who founded the service blog in 2007, Microstock Diaries, said Shutterstock had been the most outstanding in the field of innovation in recent years. He believes that the Shutterstock early success of the decision factor is the subscription model, medium-term development is relatively ordinary. In the 2009, Shutterstock also dominated social media integration with Facebook and Twitter, and in 2011 unveiled an ingenious ipad app. Torrens that the company is now "doing cool things in the search field".

More language support, more sophisticated search capabilities and more innovative products are coming. Shutterstock is working to develop an additional service offset to provide royalty-free work for customers willing to buy high-end photos and illustrations at high prices. Oringer is in the early stages of what he calls the "learning market" (Marketplace for learning), a subscription that enables contributors to receive rewards for teaching videos.

"The rise of these markets stems from the growing number of devices in people's hands," Oringer said. Just as the internet has enabled me to create a company within five years, people can produce and create more and more content, all of which will bring about change. ”