December 2005

age fotostock (www.agefotostock.com) celebrates its 5 years of existence of its THP (Technological Hosting Platform) model, adding to it e-commerce, virtual CD´s, Digital Access Management and Visual Lightboxes. The THP represents a unique business model for the stock photography Internet Economy.

age fotostock defines the term, THP, as the sum of working and marketing efforts of a group of people: providers of images, distributors and clients, interacting within the global market place with the further implication of all of them being at their own will and not submissive to a major organization.

It is amazing how, the letters "THP" (Technological Hosting Platform) have come to mean so much to so many, and are being used to our great surprise, even by newcomers asking to age fotostock "we would like to know more about this THP system you have". What began as informal person-to-person means of circulating information about the technology that age fotostock was introducing five years ago to its network distributors, has now evolved into a community of 45 agents, 145 RF and RM image providers and slightly over 1300 photographers sharing an impressive 2,6 million high resolution strictly edited images that reside on age fotostock servers located in Barcelona, Spain, and New York. Even more another added 44 age fotostock agents receive different levels of support as the result of the technology emanating from the THP developments, something that, for example, allows age fotostock to massive processing and keywording to seven languages thousands of images in a fraction of time that takes other companies do the same.

The THP is a completely different business model for stock photography: the THP is a network of inter-relationships, rather than the hierarchical, command-and-control, provider-distributor model of the Stock Photography business of the last century. Just like an ecosystem in nature, activity in the Internet Economy is self-organizing and the bottom line of the natural selection takes place around profit to suppliers and distributors and high value to customers.

As the THP has been evolving both technologically and in population, age fotostock has been adding value to a system that has allowed to so many stock agencies participate smoothly and at very low cost in the Internet stock photography economy and still maintain their own identity. The latest evolutionary additions to the THP were unveiled in Barcelona at the end of November to a very reduced number of participants that will be acting as beta-testers before the key features will be offered, within the next three months, to the remaining 45 THP participants.

The benefits that e-commerce offers to any website together with the capacity to transact with RF virtual CD-Rom´s, something the would finally eliminate the need to carry over masses of physical CD´s are obvious to any company selling stock photography. However the advantages didn´t terminate here as two other key issues have been also added: the DAM (Digital Assets Management) development that allows clients to manage and download again every image that they have purchased before and a highly evolved system of Lightboxes that gives extraordinary control to those clients using them.

In the Industrial Economy of the last century the hierarchical value chain was the basis of competition. In the Internet Economy of today, where knowledge, information and technology are the prevailing currencies of competition, a new set of rules are emerging reflecting the basic nature of the Internet Economy, it promotes broad and massive market participation generating a deep sense of community among all participants. The THP, developed by age fotostock, shows the perfect mixture of knowledge, information and technology required to be in the stock photography market today.

age fotostock is a stock photography agency with offices in Barcelona, Madrid and New York, distributing more than 2,6 million images through 90 agents around the world using a variety of technologies being the most relevant of all their Technological Hosting Platform (THP).

age fotostock, alter more than 32 years of existence is an example of an independent company based upon its large experience in the business, extremely good image editing capacities, careful attention to technology and self generation of their own financial resources, something that has made age fotostock a largely immune to the frequent earthquakes of the stock photography industry.