Inside the Shutterstock Zeitgeist
Along with the ever-growing amount of content we consume online--produced by media giants and individuals alike--comes an increasing appetite for images. In barely a decade, a multimillion-dollar industry has blossomed to feed this beast.
Stock photography--images created specifically for purchase by publishers or other clients--has been around since the 1920s. But the digital age has brought with it a new term, microstock, referring to online images, often crowdsourced from amateur photographers and artists, that can be bought cheaply and used by anyone, royalty-free.
The first microstock company, iStockphoto, was started in 2000 (it sold to Getty Images six years later for $50 million). But the market truly rose to prominence in 2003, when 29-year-old serial entrepreneur Jon Oringer thought to combine the idea of a crowdsourced image marketplace with a subscription-based business model. His company, Shutterstock, offered bloggers, media agencies and businesses of any size access to low-cost images. And that demand spurred even more supply, as contributors flocked to provide their works to a platform with high purchase volume.
Today, Shutterstock, where Oringer serves as CEO and chairman of the board, houses 24 million royalty-free images, illustrations, vectors and video clips. The website is available in 14 languages and features the work of 35,000 contributors from 100 countries. The company was the first in a now-crowded industry to achieve 250 million downloads--at last count, two Shutterstock images
