Comments on: Photo site Digital Railroad derailed completely

Digital Railroad shuts down, leaving customer wondering why.

[l.angier]

As a contributer I am sorry to see it go. A few months ago, they increased everyone's archive size 10 fold but also increased their cut of the pie. But it required only a little effort to make a few bucks on the site if one tried. It was seeming to just gain momentum.

In some ways, they had overkill on the software allowing the uploading and editing of work that was best done on one's own machine and backed up there. I hope too many people didn't rely upon the archiving and keywording their images just at DRR!

Luckily for me and several other contributors I've talked with, we edited, captioned and keyworded our own images before uploading them to DRR. We all backed up these images to DVD and external drives, thank goodness!

Sure, we're out the time it took to process and upload, but we're lucky. A few years ago, one publisher went kaput, locking the doors and shafted us for images he published and used. If it wasn't for a couple of concerned editors sneaking in after hours to grab the images and getting them back to us, our original film would have been irreparably lost...

All told, between me and three or four colleagues, we had probably more than 20,000 images at DRR. I was seeing income this year from my library, finally making my efforts pay off.

What we'll all miss is an easy and structured way to create light boxes for our clients and the Marketplace sales that helped us pay the hosting fee along the way. It was a fairly easy way to work with high-res images and image delivery that didn't require us to be web-heads.

Too bad someone can't come in and just take it over and save countless hours for all of us and make it a win-win for all... The concept was great and died before its time.

[Galaxy5]

Sounds just like what happened to a company I used to be with; after 15 years in business and a big expansion, they were looking for financing during the dot-com bust when the butchers of Nightingale were brought in to flay the company.

Two weeks after Nightingale walked in, everyone was gone, with no severance. Customers were left high and dry. Nightingale principals were enjoying steak and martinis in their suite at the San Jose Fairmont every night for months as they parceled out what remained of our company.

When Nightingale was hired, here's what our company's CEO had to say: ""I am delighted that the Board has made this decision and look forward to working in partnership with Kevin to help ***com preserve the inherent value in its leading ***** technology and network."

As I said, two weeks later, no one had a job or any severance. Customers who used our product daily to conduct business and make their incomes had no advance warning.

This is how modern, private businesses die - beholden to all stakeholders except the people they went into business to "serve" - their customers.

[djmaddogfreak]

Odd, but I just went on the site, was able to get around the front page that says it's shut down, and even create a new account and upload an image....

If you still have images up there, I would try getting around the front page and logging in...

[djmaddogfreak]

one other thing... to get around that page.... simply type /index at the end of the address.. it will come up with a page not found and give you the ability to log in.

[johnqh]

A lot of websites without revenue model will shut down. A business simply cannot survive forever purely on investors' money. We learned this during the .com bubble, and we will soon learn web 2.0 is no different.

[pfsalisbury]

What does this mean for the smaller online photo libraries? Are they still viable? I have a large collection of stock images and am wondering where the best place is to sell them.

[furono]

To pfsalisbury : If you can market your own photos then the best place in my opinion is Smugmug. As a long time Pro customer I trust them fully as a family company. I would never worry about my photos disappearing at a moments notice. They don't take risks and have a great reputation. Other companies like this one and Photoshelter, Zooomr all have let down customers but Smugmug isn't that kind of company.
They also have plans in the future to start a stock photography part of Smugmug.

[Anaksagorka]

Were you left high and dry by Digital Railroad going bust?
I know a company that has a good piece of image library software ? they do footage libraries too.
Big advantage is that you?ll own the software; I hear they are offering credit terms too.
Take a look at http://www.big-easy-footage-library-software.com and http://big-easy-image-library-software.com

[Anaksagorka]

http://www.big-easy-footage-library-software.co.uk is a good alternative

[tomekiii]

Dear user of Digital Railroad,
Are you still looking for an ASP solution to store and offer your images after the demise of Digital Railroad? We from akitogo would like to turn your attention to our product AKIBASE.

AKIBASE does not only administrate media (Digital Asset Management), but offers a complete business solution. The software enables the online sale of an unlimited number of media including invoicing and supports the professional marketing of your products. You always keep track of your sales, marketing activities, media distribution to sales partners and more. An automatic connectivity to platforms like APIS, Fotofinder, other AKIBASE databases or supply platforms like AGE offers comprehensive support to build cooperations.

See more at:
http://www.akitogo.com/go/akibase/referencesAkibase/&stSetlanguage=eng"
or please just call: [phone]

Tomek Pawletko
akitogo OHG
Hanauer Landstrasse 188
60314 Frankfurt
Germany
Tel: [phone]
Fax: [phone]