November 2, 2000
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Photographer Drake Sorey was kind enough to pass along his take on the dot com flameout of ExactPhoto mentioned earlier this week.
“I read your blog entry about Exactly! and thought I’d mention something. The company had been around for about two years offering free billing/organization software for photographers, as well as a way to phone-order film, etc. at a discount. Although I have registered and tried the software, I have never really used it (my own invoices are more than adequate and much nicer looking) primarily because the interface (at least for the Mac) was not that good, and I could never quite figure out how to get an invoice started! (gave it a couple minutes — lazy?) Nevertheless, it was, I thought, something very worthwhile, and a good thing for photographers; a standardization of rates, terms and such is a good thing. Their stock business would have been a wonderful thing also, had it been successful, since the contracts of Corbis and Getty, two major companies currently making big and bad changes to the photographers end of the stock photo business, are screwing the photographer. An Exactly! contract would have been a much more photographer friendly, progressive, and fair contract. So while it seemed to be a rather instantaneous burn-out, I think it was more the case of an ill-timed, ill-advised press release that should never have gone out in the first place. Supposedly, they will still release the next (final) version of Exactly! For Photographers 2.0 — then, poof, they will be gone.”
After receiving Drake’s message, I formulated a couple of thoughts on the subject. While the timing of the press release does appear to be a bit misplaced, it could have been an honest attempt at giving the business a kick in the pants. The point here is that once again an assumption has been made that good press means gold. Wrong. I’ve seen too many companies sit back and rely on a little bit of press coverage and serendipitous word of mouth to be their primary supplies of customer traffic.
I’m wondering how much was done by the folks at ExactPhoto to get their product (which obviously had some strong benefits) in the face of potential customers. It’s not like there isn’t a need for the services they were offering. Alternatives in any industry are a good thing have and encourage. On another point, putting all good intentions aside, I’d be a little concerned about a dissolving company promising to release another version of its software product. Without the promise or ability to support the software after release, what’s the point?Consider this a disclaimer: For the record, I work for EyeWire which is a visual content brand owned by Getty Images. I posted Drake’s feedback because it was honest and I felt it should be shared. I’m not going to take sides in the argument regarding the treatment of photographers by large scale aggregators such as Getty and Corbis. Likewise, I’m going to start playing favorites at this point in my life either. Thanks for understanding.
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