As of today, Scoopt, will stop taking photos from the public and licensing them out.
The site, which received photos from members of the public and offered them for sale to news organisations around the world, was bought by Getty Images back in March 2007.
Twitter to blame
Getty have now taken the decision to close the site. The founder of the site, Kyle MacRae, is citing “social networking sites, such as Twitter” as making the business model of Scoopt unworkable.
As he told all media scotland, “People seem keener to share their pictures for free – even really dramatic ones such as the recent aeroplane crash on the Hudson River – than consider trying to make money from them through syndication.”
Back in July 2008, Getty announced a deal with Flickr giving them access to their selection of people’s photos.