Has Pond5 been shut down?

The symptoms:
- No new videos reviewed for over 1 month, possibly longer. We have over 700 videos "pending".
- No response to questions asked on the forums for over a month
- The support AI refuses to answer questions about the failure to review new videos
- No response to questions emailed to support. In checking the email logs, it appears that the support email address has been blocked from its own server:
###
Message blocked
Your message to jxjz1zs0@shutterstock-support.intercom-mail.com has been blocked. See technical details below for more information.
The response from the remote server was: 550 5.7.1 IP address blacklisted by recipient
###

Has anyone, anywhere seen ANY "proof of life" at Pond5?

You guessed it right! From the moment pond5 was sold to sutterstock, it basically ceased to exist. They slowly destroyed it (which is why they bought it). From the very beginning, they changed the terms unilaterally and ''killed their artists''. This is more profitable to do to a company that has been biting you and bleeding you for so long. Don't think it's strange because you're no longer making money. They are! Take advantage of the new situation, keep pond as a showcase for your work, and look for new platforms that ensure you profits out there! There are many!

There was a post a few weeks ago that someone got from support explaining that Pond5 has lost all their reviewers due to a restructuring so my guess is they have very few staff if any left and the site is running on auto-pilot or Ai.

I suspect as the economy worsens and Ai replaces stock footage that you'll see many stock websites closing, it will be a very small niche industry going forward similar to vinyl records, they're still around but in the era of streaming it's not much of an industry.

@cinemadame , What other platforms?, I don't think there's any platform let that allows you to make a living at this anymore, lack of sales due to Ai and lack of any meaningful commissions have made this a small hobby or a "business" for those who need a tax loss to report and offset income.

Yeah, one must ditch that ship & fast. Not sure for best case scenario for everyone, but yes, you certainly need something else or more besides your catalogue, that is why AI Dataset earnings have been very special over the past couple of years. It's the shaky bridge we are standing on.

I have clips Pending Review for 4 & 5 weeks now. On the last lot they said they couldn't contact the reviewers! It's all ground to a halt. Not sure where to put my stuff now if this is a deadend.

It's only a matter of time before it's completely dead. It was a great fun ride from 2008 to whenever SS took over. I deleted all my premium footage a couple of months ago (funnily enough scored some high priced direct sales almost immediately) and won't be submitting anything else here (unless they re-instate high prices again.)

its over, like some print on demand sites the grab has started, lowering commission, delays in approval, I bet the next will be photographers being asked for a monthly subscription. sad thing is that on literally every documentary program i see in England in the credits it shows pond 5, AI has taken the skill out of taking image and video, i see people on here literally begging for dataset earnings, do they not know that means ai company's are going to be using your work, now someone can sit at home generating images and video uploading them and the skill is gone, and they are using other peoples work, i removed all of my images a while back after pond5 stated paying 20 cents and under and thought that was acceptable i made a couple of hundred dollars only last year, so my stance is that if i get low balled on sounds i remove them low balled on video they go.

It's over not just for stock media producers but so many others, software and web developers, etc, the Ai is getting very good very fast at some things, it's not perfect but it's getting there.

The worst case scenario is coming true around the world and the layoffs are in the hundreds of thousands if not millions and the competition at least here in Canada for retail and janitorial jobs is next level and you're competing for those part time min wage jobs with experiences software developers and others who've been laid off due to Ai.

Start thinking (and applying) for jobs today because this is over.

Ouch! now we have on Pond5 main page with "Try our VideoAI generator for free, no commitment" just below search bar... I guess they don't want to be falling behind the trend for all other sites. They only use Veo3 as far as i understood.