Montreal firm creates Twitter photo agency

[Don Denton]

"CrowdMedia’s premise is simple: crowdsourced social photos shared on Twitter or Instagram are, more and more, becoming critically important to news coverage. So the startup offers an automated platform that gets those pictures out of social media and onto the front page of major news organizations, with rights cleared and money in the owner’s pocket … all within minutes.

“We want to completely crush today’s model of journalism,” cofounder and CEO Martin Roldan told me last night."

The system is simple in concept: CrowdMedia’s platform finds social photos related to newsworthy events either by keyword or geolocation and automatically tweets the photographer, asking if he or she wants to sell them to publishers. Photographers click on the link in the tweet to a mobile site, and a couple of simple steps later, the photo is released and in CrowdMedia’s pool, where media organizations can purchase the right to use it. "
Read more at http://venturebeat.com/2013/07/12/crowdmedia-sells-everyones-newsworthy-twitter-pics-and-could-just-change-journalism-forever/#egpZFjO4ahoEfF8W.99

[Mark Blinch]

Very interesting idea, although its just being a middle man.

Newspapers and wires have been picking up twitter photographs for years now, and this place just wants to make a cut on that action. Granted they are doing the work in selling the photographs, each photo sells for 20 bucks, and the photog gets 10 bucks per sale.

Assuming that you get 200 sales if you survive a plane crash and shoot a picture after escaping the plane, thats 2 grand in your pocket. What is cool is that the person who took the picture gets paid, which is what I like best about the whole thing.

I also dont see why Reuters, AP, or any other wire wont soon mimic this operation, or buy it outright if it succeeds.

I dont think he will "completely crush the model", because his source material is ultimately composed by amateurs, possibly unverified, and without ethical training. However I do see the value in this, as the best pix can come from who the people who stumbled their way into major news just by dumb luck. I am very interested to see if this can be sustained or if it can get off the ground in the first place.

[Jack Simpson]

FWIW,  I realised my days as a freelance photojournalist were numbered
when I lost out on three(3) spot news events to:

A) a multiple car accident involving police vehicles -- lost out to the actual Police Dept's photo people

B) a fatal "pedestrian struck" accident involving a (reality) TV vehicle -- lost out to Twitter .. a picture of another event involving one of, said shows, vehicle

C) a police involved homicide -- lost out to a Google Maps "pointer" indicating where the shooting took place

And, I may have to invest in either the Samsung 20x zoom "android" based camera or Nikon's 10x zoom Coolpix "android"
based camera which Nick Didlick uses for (some of) his Facebook/Twitter posts  ......

Cheers,

Jack

[Ken Gigliotti]

  Sounds like another opportunity for the newspaper business to at least think about stealing . When you think about how our business works and how much money it generates , then think about how much free content we expect to have access to , it gets scary to think someone might want money for access .
   Free sports , free concerts , free access to political conventions ,to people's thoughts , their buying habits, our business likes free photos , free news tips , I guess things might be changing .
   Can the news business , whether it be newspaper or TV , even radio  join the pay for play  market for  events , and even general news if everyone had to pay or sponsor every portion of an event .
    I can see a day when city police will have a photographer supplying pictures to major busts for a cost  , every  sports teams could sell positions or exclusivity .
   Freegan news is a concept that could get crushed in many ways. BUT it would force our services down a more exclusive , more creative , and more relevant path than it is on right now . With no easy route a tougher path will be open to a strong minded approach that exploits the unexploited . The power of writing and photography taken to  a progressive  
stage , to where the buyers of product live . The thing that you do not throw away or leave in coffee shops , but value in a way previously thought impossible. The newspaper , the key to a life worth living .
   People wanted a newspaper and they were referred disappointedly  to a website . So they went somewhere else and other opportunities opened up . I think technology exists to turn pages or scroll down content without the tedious task of hunting and clicking .Readers need to move faster through the content to find something written in a way that speaks to them . 
  Selling pictures may be great for major news , but it is hard to say regarding everyday  content  .
  When the perfect Model T Ford car was only available in black , it opened the door for innovation for others .It doesn't matter how fast you turn your wretch , it is still a Model T.
   Expect a 1% drop in circulation in every quarter and hope it never drops more than that no matter how good a job is being done.  I know the smart people are seeing this but they are so attached to a slow and steady approcah that big Pieces of the glacier are beginning to fall away . A big piece fell away this week .  

[Ken Gigliotti]

This type of model could be used to create income in the music business .
 If a simple , legal framework was created online so people could legally use copyright music for 2-3 minute - YouTube  videos , slide shows and small scale business presentations , wedding/events in hotels for a small one time charge , extra income could be generated for artists/ writers . The public at large would likely pay a small charge so they would not have to worry about the illegal download police in the future . Hotel events people would have a frame work to use the music inside their walls. I think there are a majority of people would pay , places like newspapers , TV would pay more for editorial non commercial features .
   Policing of internet content and pay to play is something that technology is beginning to evolve to.

[Warren Toda]

This type of model could be used to create income in the music business .

If a simple , legal framework was created online so people could legally use copyright music for 2-3 minute - YouTube  videos , slide shows and small scale business presentations , wedding/events in hotels for a small one time charge, extra income could be generated for artists/ writers

With last year's changes to Canada's Copyright Act, some of this can be done now (e.g. Youtube videos) and no payment is required.

Fair Dealing section 29.21: Non-commercial User generated content

As far at this Twitter photo agency goes, how many other similar businesses have come and gone?



Key phrases from the original article:

CrowdMedia’s platform, which combs through 150 million shared photos every day, searching for the .03 percent that are newsworthy ....

This means there are 45,000 "newsworthy" pictures per day on Twitter. Really?

Media organizations pay a flat $20 for non-exclusive rights to new photos, with the original photographers getting 50 percent of the proceeds, and CrowdMedia taking 50 percent. Older photos that are less newsworthy sell for $5 each.

Wow, a cellphone owner gets paid $10 for a new photo and $2.50 for a "less newsworthy" photo. You're a sucker if you take that deal.

This type of business model is great for the business and bad for the contributors. This is exactly how all the cheap stock agencies work ... the same stock agencies that are now failing and are being "forced" to lower commissions to contributors. The business thinks that it can earn money through volume. We lose money on every sale but we make up for it with volume!

We’re not interested in exclusivity,” Roldan told me. ”You can sell exclusivity for a couple thousand dollars, very rarely. But we know that we can sell a good shot a thousand times, and that’s more money than you can get by selling the rights exclusively … and wasting two days for the negotiations.”

The average cellphone owner doesn't have a clue what to do with their photos and they generally place no value on their pictures. This means they are ripe to be taken advantage of.

Our vision is automated event detection technology that detect levels of noise everywhere, analyzes relevancy of photos automatically, ... all automated without any human touch ...

What could possibly go wrong?


I suspect the real purpose of this business is not about selling pictures or doing any journalism. It's about creating a business that can be sold off to Getty, Google, Yahoo, etc. The business itself is the business.


Death pool for this business? I'll say 11 months.

[Ken Gigliotti]

  This makes my head hurt . This is truly the world of wonder. Creating income and commissions from the vast numbers of free pictures being offered seems inevitable . It seems like crowd sourcing money in reverse . The selling and reselling of pictures that have been previously offered for free is taking citizen journalism to a different level .  Selling a commodity and not a service.It is more like a lottery for an individual , but high value news pictures could end up being stripped away and sold in a different category as the situation presents itself.
  Either way media pays and someone gets paid . If media sits on it's hands  like it has in the last twenty years , it will loose an opportunity to be an owner of a platform and not a renter of one. The real money is likely not in news . This is again an area where local newspapers could loose and wire services  could win . It could see a TV network jumping into this or a technology company with money to burn and over paying for a startup with (maybe)  big upside .We publish and resell what was once considered non news ,pictorial images and customers love to buy them .

  As our media still struggles to develop a commercial website and  technology is marching on , actually a cavalry charge (in it's heyday) ,advancing rapidly ,advancing  into the future , slashing the weak in fixed positions ,over running  and always moving forward to the next direct sale , non advertizing objective.
   This is internet short duration capitalism , a new frontier , unregulated , wide open for those to grab that brass ring . This is not a buy and hold culture. Run and GUN , a gold rush . Win big and loose bigger for the holders of infrastructure.  
   It is the age of the digital  entrepreneur , and they  do not have to  take much of a chance , capital is minimal and reward is highly possible . For the few futurists who look forward and see possiblities , stuff like this happens.
   One of Teddy Roosevelt's maxims  was , when in doubt the best thing to do is the right thing , the next best thing is to do the wrong thing ,the worst thing to do is nothing at all . Charge !This is not the time to, do nothing at all tinkering for newspapers .Cost cutting to the point where there  no expenses ,no customers  and no product , has no logic. If the product is not selling , you have to look at the product.  -Teddy Roosevelt was leading his army up San Juan Hill when it became STALLED , his troops would not advance . Staying where they were meant certain death , he convinced them to move forward .

[Moe Doiron]

People pay for photos?

[Ken Gigliotti]

I am sure each major paper in Canada has a picture library of over a million hard copy pictures  .8x10's they used to call them .  I wonder what they would be worth ? We constantly look with envy everywhere but our own back yard. When I started they were simply tossing 8x10 glass negatives into the garbage .

[Warren Toda]

Death pool for this business? I'll say 11 months.

Sorry for  resurrecting an old thread but just wanted to say I was wrong.

The company lasted 24 months. 


From the linked article in very first post above:

Numerous investors I talked to last night said the crowdsourced photojournalism startup has a chance to get very, very big.

And they never learn. So is this now eight (?) companies that started up the same business and then quickly failed?

We want to completely crush today’s model of journalism

Way to crush it! 

Today's model of journalism will crush itself.