stock.xchng (also known as SXC) was a

website A website (also written as a web site) is any web page whose content is identified by a common domain name and is published on at least one web server. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, educatio ...

providing free-to use

stock photography Stock photography is the supply of photographs that 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 * P ...

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 ...

). 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. (stylized as gettyimages) is a visual media company and supplier of stock images, editorial photography, video, and music for business and consumers, with a library of over 477 million assets. It targets three mark ...

, and the site is now tied in with the

iStock iStock is an online royalty free, international microstock photography provider based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. History The company was founded by Bruce Livingstone in May 2000, as iStockphoto, a free stock imagery website supported by L ...

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 consisting of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), networks of Dyad (sociology), dyadic ties, and other Social relation, social interactions between actors. The social network per ...

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

blog A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries also known as posts. Posts are typically displayed in Reverse chronology, reverse chronologic ...

and participate in online forums 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 standards ...

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 systems. This contrasts with uploading, where data is ''sent to'' a remote ...

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 p ...

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 fro ...

, but functioned as a commercial

microstock photography Microstock 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) do so from a wider range of photographer ...

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 (Currency symbol, symbol: Dollar sign, $; ISO 4217, currency code: USD) is the official currency of the United States and International use of the U.S. dollar, several other countries. The Coinage Act of 1792 introdu ...

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

search engine A search engine is a software system that provides hyperlinks to web pages, and other relevant information on World Wide Web, the Web in response to a user's web query, query. The user enters a query in a web browser or a mobile app, and the sea ...

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, fhe 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