stock.xchng (also known as SXC) was a
website providing free-to use
stock photography and illustrations, its name being a
reduced version of "stock exchange" (meaning the exchange of stock photography, and a
play on the term
stock exchange
A stock exchange, securities exchange, or bourse is an exchange where stockbrokers and traders can buy and sell securities, such as shares of stock, bonds and other financial instruments. Stock exchanges may also provide facilities for th ...
). The site was launched in February 2001 by Peter Hamza, and allows users to contribute, share and download high-resolution photographs and illustrations free of charge. Contributors are encouraged to submit material to enhance their photography career through wider public exposure. In 2009, the site had over 2,500,000 registered users (1,000,000 in the USA alone) and more than 400,000 photos.
Until 2009 it operated parallel to its sister site, Stockxpert.com, until the site's parent company, Jupiterimages, was purchased by
Getty Images
Getty Images Holdings, Inc. is an American visual media company and is a supplier of stock images, editorial photography, video and music for business and consumers, with a library of over 477 million assets. It targets three markets— creative ...
, and the site is now tied in with the
iStock library of paid images.
Since its acquisition by Getty Images in 2014, the site was renamed FreeImages in 2014 and the web address now redirects to a freeimages.com URL. It has retained the older SXC images and the link to the iStock website.
Features
The stock.xchng site operated as a hybrid of a picture library site and a
social networking
A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for an ...
site; registered users could set up a personal profile, upload their photographic works to share with other users, write a
blog and participate in
online forums to discuss and critique each other's work.
As a design resource, the site provided a library of high-resolution,
royalty-free
Royalty-free (RF) material subject to copyright or other intellectual property rights may be used without the need to pay royalties or license fees for each use, per each copy or volume sold or some time period of use or sales.
Computer standard ...
photographs which may be
downloaded free of charge for use in design projects. Although images are free, contributors still retain
moral rights and photographs are still subject to usage restrictions.
Stockxpert
Until 2009, stock.xchng operated alongside its sister site, Stockxpert. Stockxpert was designed with a near-identical
user interface, but functioned as a commercial
microstock photography site, allowing users, through a system of
online credits, to purchase and download images for a very low cost, often as low as
US$1.
On the free stock.xchng website, results from the
search engine
A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...
would also bring up a sample of five images from Stockxpert to encourage users to purchase images from Stockxpert. Following the acquisition of Jupiterimages by Getty in 2009, stock.xchng presented search results from Getty's own microstock site, iStockphoto.
Stockxpert continued to operate as a separate website until its closure on February 11, 2010.
Parent companies
The site was a subsidiary of
HAAP Media, which was the stock photography division of
Dream Interactive
A dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. Humans spend about two hours dreaming per night, and each dream lasts around 5 to 20 minutes, althou ...
.
In 2008, HAAP was acquired by the stock photo company
Jupiterimages. In February 2009, Jupiterimages was purchased by
Getty Images
Getty Images Holdings, Inc. is an American visual media company and is a supplier of stock images, editorial photography, video and music for business and consumers, with a library of over 477 million assets. It targets three markets— creative ...
,
and the stock photo operations of SXC became a joint venture between Getty and Dream Interactive.
In December 2009 the founders decided to sell their remaining interest in the sites
and later started a similar service,
Stockfresh.
References
External links
stock.xchng (Old web address)Freeimages.com (to which the SXC site redirects)Stockxpert.com (Defunct sister site)HAAP Media Ltd. (Parent company) (Site returns error, last checked April 2017)Dream InteractiveJupiterimages (Now forwards to Getty Images)Getty ImagesStockfresh
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Image-sharing websites
Stock photography
Getty Images