Hired former mangers of iSock?

Hi, Pond5.
A curious thought came to me. Have you hired some former top mangers of iStock lately? Those ones that successfully degraded iStock from #1 position in industry to 2-nd tier. Because the symptoms are very alike. Decreasing site functionality, increasing glitches, bad bestmatch, acceptance of tons of trash into collection, lowering sales, long approval wait time, less friendly attitude to artists… You are planning to end up like iStock? Share your plans with us, please, so that we could correct ours.

Who is iSock?

May be what you yourself can do, is set up your business---your own video agency--to compete with Pond5. I am sure you have a better idea/plan than Pond5, and may be we can join yours and make some not-less-than-50% .. Deal ? Cool down !

## Better use your time to shoot and upload more, if that doesn't help sales from the pond, then you know the door.

i think it's all due to the upcoming new site (or new big improvements on the site) in february.
it's probably a big change, so some panick occurs before big changes happen, usually.
but they did raise the threshold and i think they will continue to reject stuff.
it will be harder for new contributors to get in...and better for us cuz we'll have less competition.
on the other hand yeah, we will get rejected a lot as well...

I think this post doesn't sound friendly and is a bit too much!
So by all frustration we should relax a bit and stay cool. I won't see a shitstorm mentality here.

+1 patuwe97 - getting tired of all the whining around here lately...

I am not a big seller here. But I must say that it seems to be a well run site.

Pond5 is great, and I'm no fan boy :p

One thing he has wrong if he thinks istock accepted tons of trash into their library, they didn't... Their review process was the worst.

Let's all stay calm and wait it out.... Theres always reason to the madness

mikie11
It's very sad to say but I have somewhat similar feelings.

Just look at the names of audio tracks, that some composers invent to be recognised by best match!
"Uplifting Inspirational Corporate Bright Positive Piano Strings Modern Orchestra" - is it not wild?

How the buyer can check popularity of the track if the number of sales is no longer available? What is the criteria of popularity on a selling platform if not the number of sales?
etc.

It's not a panic, just some impressions of last changes. I hope this forum is made for any kind of opinions, is it?

Sure glad the views and sales of other Artists work is not visible. P5 is the market place for independent businesses. Part of business is confidential information. It's no ones business on sales other than the Artist that makes the sale. Figuring out trends and popularity is part of business. Good luck with all your businesses ;)

The more personal business information that is available to the individual the better ... as long as it's their business info and not others.

i didnt know the number of sales wasnt available for buyer anymore.
it's a good thing. people tend to get influenced by the number of sales and they think
"well, if others bought it, it means it's really good, i should buy it too", or
"no one bought it, surely there must be something wrong with it", and this kind of
mentality makes top sellers become even more sold, and low sellers become practically invisible
and not standing a chance.
so, removing that info so the buyer doesnt see it anymore is very nice and i
think is definitely more fair for the contributor.