Another bit of bad news and sorry to report. Photobusinessforum is reporting that Digital Railroad is shutting their doors. There are a slew of postings on Facebook and changes to peoples jobs in their profiles. This one says "Charles left his job as CEO at Digital Railroad." That is Charles Mauzy, the "former" CEO of DRR.
Not sure the total details on this one but again we are sorry to see another one go. I can assure you Cutcaster is on solid financial ground which lets me sleep well at night. Also we are a lean, mean, fighting machine ;-)
If you are a Digital Railroad subscriber, I would be downloading all of my needed files immediately, if for no other reason than to have a backup of them (even if they do remain in operation), but also make sure that any monthly or annual fees are not billing to your credit card in the coming weeks as they are working to liquidate or sell the company. No point in throwing away your money.
UPDATE- I'm hearing Digital Railroad has been forced to suspend all operations. This archive may only be accessible for the next 24 hours. Sounds completely unacceptable to me.
Clients who have been tracking the company's downfall may have seen this
coming, but for those who might not have known about Digital Railroad's
financial straights find themselves now having less than 24 hours to recover
their photographic archives from Digital Raiload's servers.
"Everyone is downloading now and their FTP has slowed to a crawl," one
Digital Railroad member told News Photographer magazine this afternoon. It's
estimated that there may be as many as 1,900 client archives on Digital
Railroad's servers as of today.
Full story here:
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Is Digital Railroad closing? Say it ain't so, Joe.
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Cutcaster
Do you remember your first sale? We do!!!
John, don't you feel it's becoming too easy to set up and then close a stock photo site?
ReplyDeleteit's almost comes to a point where you really don't care to upload to any more newbies. it's even scarier when you see the featured photos are exactly bearing the same defects as the ones the reviewers reject for your own images.
is it my imagination or am i correct in suspecting these CEOs are just putting up their own images calling it a new company.
open, shut, case closed...
revolving door almost. hmm?
what do you say?
thank goodness cutcasters is not that ;)
I can understand your frustration but don't think so. I think the absolute key is focusing on getting qualified buyers so the sellers are rewarded and the site can pay its bills. Trust me it is not that easy to set up an agency otherwise everyone would do it. You will have to ask PS and DRR about what it is like to shut one down. Has to be a nightmare for everyone involved and very very sad.
ReplyDeletePS and DRR were two big companies that were not easy to set up and had some money which they quickly burnt through. They also were full of a ton of other peoples' images.
Old news but turns out they are just reducing staff so death is postponed....
ReplyDelete"To Our Valued Members, Customers and Partners,
For the past few weeks, Digital Railroad (DRR) has been seeking additional funding required to sustain its current level of operations. To date, those efforts have been unsuccessful. As a result, effective October 15, 2008, the company has initiated a reduction in staff and expenses while it continues the funding effort. Nevertheless, Digital Railroad is committed to the continued support of its customers through this period and has retained adequate staff to support both member archives and image licensing sales through Marketplace.
We will have further information shortly and expect to provide an update to you next week. In the meantime, we are grateful for the loyalty and support that you have demonstrated and thank you for your patience during this transition
Should you need additional information please contact us at support@drr.net.net.
Sincerely,
The Team at DR"
Well, they are closing now - for real. Everyone has 24 hours to get their images off Digital Railroad. There go all the keywords.
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