A (FAKE) Corbis Employee's Renegade Stock Blog (UPDATED)

UPDATE, SEPT. 24: The creator of Schtock has fessed up on his blog (and in an e-mail to us) that he is not a Corbis employee, he's a marketer and designer trying to promote his company. The blog was a stunt designed to draw attention to his viral marketing skills. Corbis had nothing to do with it. I regret taking the bait. My original post, which now makes me sound so totally gullible that I wish I had never written it, is below. - DL

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I'm just guessing that the anonymous author of the new blog Schtock works at Corbis. In the description of the blog, the writer says:

"I work at a major stock photo company cataloging images. The majority of the stuff I work with will never see the light of day for no other reason than that most people don't know it's available to them. It's a shame which I'm trying to remedy with this site.

...

For legal reasons (using the images is already illegal, but I don't want to really screw myself by using hi-res images from the database), all the images you see on the site were created with the preview thumbnails that anyone can access. I'm also refraining from stating specifically what stock company I work for for the simple reason that I don't want to potentially lose my job over this."

It took a couple of minutes to deduce that all the images on Schtock are also available through Corbis. Why risk your job to post stock photos online? Given that Corbis is in the midst of a slow-bleed restructuring, I bet this blogger sees the writing on the wall and has decided to have some fun. (There's also the remote possibility that this is another ill-conceived stealth marketing idea – an idea floated by the Swissmiss blog.)

Schtock ended up on our radar thanks to Rob Haggard, who started his blog anonymously and then went public later. Hint to Dr. Schtock: We like blogs better when they have names on them.

Comments

[excorbis]

Asked their European Marketing head if it was a new scheme and if so, much much better than that silly fake museum. Have yet to have a response.

At least the photography and features behind it spark interest...

No one should lose their jobs over promoting the collection, they need more people working there to want to do just that.

[excorbis]

Asked their European Marketing head if it was a new scheme and if so, much much better than that silly fake museum. Have yet to have a response.

At least the photography and features behind it spark interest...

No one should lose their jobs over promoting the collection, they need more people working there to want to do just that.

[robert]

of course it's viral advertising. Smart too.