stock.xchng (also known as SXC) was a

website A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google Search, Google, Facebook, Amaz ...

providing free-to use

stock photography Stock photography is the supply of photographs which are often licensed for specific uses. The stock photo industry, which began to gain hold in the 1920s, has established models including traditional macrostock photography, midstock photography, ...

and illustrations, its name being a reduced version of "stock exchange" (meaning the exchange of stock photography, and a

play Play most commonly refers to: * Play (activity), an activity done for enjoyment * Play (theatre), a work of drama Play may refer also to: Computers and technology * Google Play, a digital content service * Play Framework, a Java framework * Pla ...

on the term

stock exchange A stock exchange, securities exchange, or bourse is an exchange where stockbrokers and traders can buy and sell securities, such as shares of stock, bonds and other financial instruments. Stock exchanges may also provide facilities for th ...

). The site was launched in February 2001 by Peter Hamza, and allows users to contribute, share and download high-resolution photographs and illustrations free of charge. Contributors are encouraged to submit material to enhance their photography career through wider public exposure. In 2009, the site had over 2,500,000 registered users (1,000,000 in the USA alone) and more than 400,000 photos. Until 2009 it operated parallel to its sister site, Stockxpert.com, until the site's parent company, Jupiterimages, was purchased by

Getty Images Getty Images Holdings, Inc. is an American visual media company and is a supplier of stock images, editorial photography, video and music for business and consumers, with a library of over 477 million assets. It targets three markets— creative ...

, and the site is now tied in with the

iStock iStock is an online royalty free, international microstock photography, micro stock photography provider based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The firm offers millions of photos, illustrations, clip art, Digital video, videos and Digital audio, aud ...

library of paid images. Since its acquisition by Getty Images in 2014, the site was renamed FreeImages in 2014 and the web address now redirects to a freeimages.com URL. It has retained the older SXC images and the link to the iStock website.

Features

The stock.xchng site operated as a hybrid of a picture library site and a

social networking A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for an ...

site; registered users could set up a personal profile, upload their photographic works to share with other users, write a

blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

and participate in

online forum An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporar ...

s to discuss and critique each other's work. As a design resource, the site provided a library of high-resolution,

royalty-free Royalty-free (RF) material subject to copyright or other intellectual property rights may be used without the need to pay royalties or license fees for each use, per each copy or volume sold or some time period of use or sales. Computer standard ...

photographs which may be

download In computer networks, download means to ''receive'' data from a remote system, typically a server such as a web server, an FTP server, an email server, or other similar system. This contrasts with uploading, where data is ''sent to'' a remote s ...

ed free of charge for use in design projects. Although images are free, contributors still retain

moral rights Moral rights are rights of creators of copyrighted works generally recognized in civil law jurisdictions and, to a lesser extent, in some common law jurisdictions. The moral rights include the right of attribution, the right to have a work pu ...

and photographs are still subject to usage restrictions.

Stockxpert

Until 2009, stock.xchng operated alongside its sister site, Stockxpert. Stockxpert was designed with a near-identical

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...

, but functioned as a commercial

microstock photography Microstock photography, also known as micropayment photography, is a part of the stock photography industry. What defines a company as a microstock photography company is that they (1) source their images almost exclusively via the Internet, (2) d ...

site, allowing users, through a system of online credits, to purchase and download images for a very low cost, often as low as

US$ The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

1. On the free stock.xchng website, results from the

search engine A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...

would also bring up a sample of five images from Stockxpert to encourage users to purchase images from Stockxpert. Following the acquisition of Jupiterimages by Getty in 2009, stock.xchng presented search results from Getty's own microstock site, iStockphoto. Stockxpert continued to operate as a separate website until its closure on February 11, 2010.

Parent companies

The site was a subsidiary of HAAP Media, which was the stock photography division of Dream Interactive. In 2008, HAAP was acquired by the stock photo company Jupiterimages. In February 2009, Jupiterimages was purchased by

, and the stock photo operations of SXC became a joint venture between Getty and Dream Interactive. In December 2009 the founders decided to sell their remaining interest in the sites and later started a similar service, Stockfresh.

References

External links

stock.xchng (Old web address)Freeimages.com (to which the SXC site redirects)Stockxpert.com (Defunct sister site)HAAP Media Ltd. (Parent company) (Site returns error, last checked April 2017)Dream InteractiveJupiterimages (Now forwards to Getty Images)Getty ImagesStockfresh
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stock.Xchng Image-sharing websites Stock photography Getty Images