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Unsplash is being acquired by Getty Images

unsplash.com

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Re: Unsplash is being acquired by Getty Images

#181

Post by vbernat »

Aeolun wrote: post #116
danso wrote: post #41

Loved reading about their journey on HN. Here's a 5-year-old thread about their costs: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11519085 Unfortunately the original link is down (and I could not find an archived version). But here's relevant material from the comments: > $18k is a lot of money to spend each month. Understanding the scale of Unsplash though can help explain the costs. > So at a cost of $18k per month you a…

I don’t mean to rain on their parade, but 30M requests served per month, while sounding really good, translates to 11 requests per second. And maybe 60 requests per second for their 140M API requests. If I were paying $2500 per month for that I’d be a bit sad.

They say it's mostly bandwidth cost. But 143TB/month is around 500Mbps. If they were to buy it themselves, at the time, it would have been around 500$/month at most. Of course, if you use a CDN/cloud, you pay the extra costs around such a service.

Re: Unsplash is being acquired by Getty Images

#182

Post by Igelau »

dna_polymerase wrote: post #110
joshuaissac wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> hunting for sites using photos without or with not 100% correct attribution I do not see what is wrong about this part (other than the illegal(?) nexus with lawyers). CC licences still have to be complied with (or the user can contact the copyright holder for an alternative licence). GPL infringers have been taken to court as well, and a legal, for-profit litigation initiative might be a good incentive that encoura…

Since I've been victim of this practice, let me elaborate: There are individuals in Germany (two photographers IIRC) who upload photos to the Wikipedia. The licence is always CC with attribution, but that part is badly presented on Wiki (or was). Next thing, they wait for people to use their images and go around to sue everyone who doesn't display the attribution string alongside the image. It is just predatory behav…

> The licence ... is badly presented on Wiki

Maybe don't pull images from Wikipedia for exactly this reason?

Re: Unsplash is being acquired by Getty Images

#183

Post by goldenchrome »

Boltgolt wrote: post #169
passivate wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO, it is hard to run a sustainable business around sharing pictures.

And then there's Instagram, who only did square photos and nothing else for years

I think you're misrepresenting Instagram. Instagram is a personal PR platform where images are the primary vehicle. In that sense Instagram is closer to Twitter (text-based PR dissemination) than Unsplash.

Re: Unsplash is being acquired by Getty Images

#184

Post by pmlnr »

dbrgn wrote: post #71

This reminds me of 500px. I used to be a huge fan of 500px. It was the most beautiful photography site on the internet, designed with attention to every tiny detail. It allowed you to share your photos under a CC license, presented them beautifully and had fantastic curated feeds with photos by fantastic photographers. In 2018 they were acquired by an investor company and partnered exclusively with Getty. As a contri…

500px also disabled it's API when this happened.

Re: Unsplash is being acquired by Getty Images

#186

Post by Igelau »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #163

>> ... I’m excited about this acquisition ... because it’s not goodbye, it’s about acceleration >> This is not one of those tech acquisitions where the company is bought to be shut down. Unsplash will continue to operate as a standalone brand and division of Getty Images. >> Will Unsplash remain an independent brand? Yes. HAHA! You can't intentionally write parody this good! Just like every teenager swears they'll be…

No one actually thinks that. Mad Libs Press Releases just has that wording baked in.

Re: Unsplash is being acquired by Getty Images

#187

Post by dna_polymerase »

Igelau wrote: post #182
dna_polymerase wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since I've been victim of this practice, let me elaborate: There are individuals in Germany (two photographers IIRC) who upload photos to the Wikipedia. The licence is always CC with attribution, but that part is badly presented on Wiki (or was). Next thing, they wait for people to use their images and go around to sue everyone who doesn't display the attribution string alongside the image. It is just predatory behav…

> The licence ... is badly presented on Wiki Maybe don't pull images from Wikipedia for exactly this reason?

I'm all for attribution in this case it was basically user generated content. We deployed measures to avoid this in the future afterwards, nonetheless I still think the practice is predatory. If I had ripped some artist off his hard work, sure. But not naming the photographer of an half-assed picture submitted to an article with close to zero traffic, in order to lure some people into copying the picture for your own profit is just shady.

Re: Unsplash is being acquired by Getty Images

#188

Post by Igelau »

munificent wrote: post #152

I was wondering what Unsplash's business model was, and I stumbled onto [1]: > Nor is it going to slap banner ads on every page of its website. Yes, it’s unveiling a digital advertising business, but Unsplash is taking a specific approach — working with companies to create branded photos, which will then appear on desirable searches. > Square, for example, could upload photos of the Square Register, which will then s…

This was no mystery. I'm pretty sure I saw a giant photo of a Coke bottle on Unsplash not that long ago. It has plenty of corporate users, and not in some secret shill sense, in a "This post from Docusign" kind of way.

Re: Unsplash is being acquired by Getty Images

#190

Post by silvi9 »

I'm very worried about this, as I've been using Unsplash's images for a lot of my blog posts. I'm just wondering how this will affect users of Unsplash's images in the long-term? Will we have to take down all our content that makes use of Unsplash imagery, in case Getty places a new license on the images or requires a fee to use the images? Or will they stay free? It's so hard to predict what will happen now that this acquisition has taken place. Unsplash was too good to be true, and now their time has come.
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