Bad news for the stock market. No, the other Stock Market; the photo one. Today news came in the form of an email from Digital Railroad announcing drastic cuts in staffing and expenses due to a failure to procure new sources of funding. Almost immediately, John Harrington posted a very revealing article on his Photo Business News blog. The short story is that DRR appears headed for a trainwreck. I find this very disturbing. I always had faith in the potential of DRR, but could never shake the couple small burrs in the backside. I think DRR had (has) great potential and had (had) good, photographer-savy leadership. However, the search engine that runs the marketplace has always needed help, being that it was slow, and returns seemed to favor certain contributors. Not the way you win friends (buyers) and influence people (photographers / contributors).
Now it seems the photo-friendly leadership is out, and the business vultures are circling. I’m convinced that there is still great potential, but the picture isn’t looking very pretty.
You can see my Digital Railroad Archive – take a look while you still can.
Yeah I read the post earlier today Gary. Frustrating to say the least as I’ll be losing an outlet for some of my images but I do have to say that the best case scenario would be if Photoshelter could pick up a good share of the talent / client base and integrate them into their service because PSA has always had superior site architecture compared to DRR IMO. That whole choose your country before seeing the photos on the DRR Marketplace absolutely drives me up the wall.
This was really a disappointing development!
Ron
Sounds like they are closing down in 24 hours. Great, I just wasted $600 bucks on a recent renewal.
Ron
Yeah, Ron. Sucks, Pure & Simple.
I’m in the same boat, having renewed only two months ago.
Fraggle-mabble-raggle-frabbits!!!