Announcements from ImageCollect | Tremendous Growth
Among some tech press releases from this week include a few announcements from local LA-based venture, ImageCollect, a micro-stock celebrity photo library, high-res and all prelicensed. In just over three months, they’ve doubled their library to 3 million photos and are adding 40,000 images per day. The immediate goal is to reach 5M photos by early 2012, all accessible via their streamlined subscription-based service with real time celebrity photo coverage and older archives.
Company CEO, Ryan Born, speaks in their official press release about big things to come with the company:
“We’re incredibly excited about this landmark, but it is only a small sign of things to come,” said Ryan Born, chief executive officer, ImageCollect. “We’re adding new celebrity pictures at a rate of approximately 40,000 images per day, with around 2 million photos still to be added. We’ve simplified our pricing, and API partners are now utilizing our technology in unique ways to fulfill a growing demand for entertainment imagery.”
Born is most notable for his work in founding sister-site, Audio Micro, an online repository for royalty free music and sound effects. Boasting both pay per download and subscription payment options, users can download and access a huge library of stock music, sound effects, royalty free music, production tracks, ringtones, and sound clips.
Other big announcements for the company aside from the large library growth has been a site redesign and a move away from credit based system to a simpler subscription style pricing model (at $19 for one download, $99/month @ 25 pictures per month, and $199/month @200 downloads per month). They’ve also opened their API allowing for 3rd parties (both end user clients and 3rd party resellers) access to the entire celebrity image database. Early adopters include People Magazine, US Weekly, Tribune, and others.
All images are pre-approved for use in editorials, magazines, e-publications like blogs and pages, and personal prints. However, to maintain quality, they’ve also kept their guidelines strict with capping circulation up to 250,000 and making it clear that their images are not to be used for advertising or promotional purposes.
