Getty Images, which till recently was in talks to buy Jupitermedia (but the talks fell through) has done a small but high-profile acquisition: it has bought Scoopt, the Scottish startup which was a representation agency for citizen journalism pictures and videos, “an aggregator and distributor of photographs and videos captured by eyewitnesses who have an accidental front row seat to headline-making moments”, as it explains itself.  Financial terms of the deal were not released. Getty recently bought WireImage, one of the biggest distributors of celebrity photos.
The company said that multimedia from Scoopt that meets Getty Images’ “stringent editorial quality standards” will be released exclusively at Gettyimages.com/editorial. Additionally, Getty will invest in technology upgrades and other enhancements to Scoopt.
The agency was started in 2005, mainly to collect and represent the sale of camerphone pics from citizens, and was among the first such efforts in this nascent field. Since then others like Sypmedia and Cell Journalist and others have cropped up.
Under Getty, Scoopt has also made some changes to its licensing rules. One of them: “Citizen photographers who submit imagery to Scoopt retain copyright while granting the agency a 12-month exclusive license that authorizes re-license to one or more publishers.” Also, the Scoopt team will continue to operate out of the site’s base in Glasgow, Scotland.
More details in release.
Related:
-- Getty Buys Celebrity Photo Service WireImage For $200 Million
-- Amateurs Get in on the Paparazzi Beat
-- Scoopt To Get Preloaded On 10M Handsets
-- Scoopt Sells First Cameraphone Shot
-- Scoopt Gets 600 Useless Photos
-- Scoopt Offers Public Cash For Mobile Snaps