Recently I heard a photographer say something.
When he was eating in a restaurant, he took a picture of Zhangluofan powder and uploaded it to a photo photography community. Within a few days, he received a share of more than a dozen dollars on his account. The gain is due to the fact that this image was adopted by an explosive gourmet article through copyright distribution. The photographer quipped, “Take a picture, and you’ll earn a meal.”
This community is called Graphworm and is a product of ByteDance. Compared with Douyin, Toutiao and other popular apps, Tutu’s attention and discussion are not so high. However, as an important image material library, Graphworm has always provided many graphic and video creators with genuine pictures needed for content creation. At the same time, Graphworm will also provide content creation materials to enterprises and creators in other content industries such as online education, FMCG, automobiles, and the Internet.
Graphworm Evolution
Today Tutu is a photo photography community with 20 million registered users, including 8 million professional photographers, and about 150,000 pictures are updated daily. In recent years, Tutu has evolved from an early photography enthusiast community to an image material platform that connects the upstream and downstream of content creation.
Focusing on the picture content ecology, Tutu is the creator of the app such as Toutiao, Douyin, and Watermelon Video, which provides free use of materials and can maximize the distribution of material copyright. The logic here is that creators contribute content to the platform, and they can use pictures and pictures for free. In fact, the platform should also pay for the copyright of materials that users need to use when creating.
In addition, Graphworm provides creators and many customers with picture resources of the required scenes, along with business innovation and market changes, iterating its own product forms and service methods. It has been observed that since 2017, Tutu platform has been updated with major functions almost every year.
In April 2017, based on the increasing demand for creative pictures in the market, based on the community of photographers and photographers, the website “Creators of Pictures” was launched. In October 2017, the Tutu community was connected with the “tuchu creative”, and the pictures taken by professional photographers can be directly contributed to the distribution system of the copyright of the pictures.
In 2018, on the basis of the professional photographer’s feed function, Tu insects opened the Tu insect community feed. This means that ordinary community users also have the right to choose whether to feed or enter the copyright library of Tutu materials when they release pictures. In 2019, the card point video function will be launched to allow community users to display pictures more diversely. Then this year, live teaching courses for photography will be launched.
Image material was originally a relatively traditional industry. The supply mode of the traditional gallery is the studio system.
The studio is made up of professional photographers, who take a small number of exquisite pictures every year and provide them to the gallery for sale. The prices are generally higher. For example, a landscape material produced by an advertisement can be sold for many years. Some time-sensitive pictures are taken by journalists. In this mode, the material of the gallery lacks diversity and the newly added output is limited.
Focusing on the group of picture producers, Graphworm is constantly strengthening the content supply on the material supply side. The iterative logic of the Graphworm platform is to decentralize the cartographic sales capabilities originally held in professional studios to more community users who can take high-quality pictures, and transform the original traditional PGC production method into a UGC model.
Behind these product iterations, the image material industry is changing from production, sales to use.
Changing material industry
In the past, the copyright of pictures was mainly used for advertisements, designs, magazine color pages, etc. But in fact, the pictures that are commercially available today also include pictures used in various information flow advertisements, new media, and e-commerce displays. These scenes have extremely high requirements on the creativity of the material.
A media practitioner told Geek Park that the image material library of his service unit is old, such as writing a public article on gourmet food, and looking for some ground-fed daily food distribution maps, which are often outdated. Pictures taken in the studio.
This change in demand has forced the material platform to change its own production methods and update the material library in a timely manner.
On June 15, Tu Chong announced that it has reached a strategic cooperation with Adobe to become the exclusive partner of Adobe Stock China, Adobe’s creative content material library. Pictures, illustrations and other resources in Adobe Stock are included in the library.
This is the first time Adobe Stock has entered the Chinese market. An insider told Geekpark (ID: geekpark) that Adobe Stock has been very cautious about entering the Chinese market. This cooperation has been discussed for two years.
For Tutu, the advantage of Adobe Stock is that it integrates a large number of creative pictures, which is a powerful supplement to the former resource library.
The production of creative pictures cannot be satisfied by only some professional studios. In fact, foreign photo platforms like Getty have begun to abolish the studios they had previously cooperated with, and turned to the UGC mode of providing images. Through the product updates, the purpose of the picture insect is to expand the picture production group step by step.
Uploading self-made pictures and materials in Tutu community can also be regarded as a content creation. Creation requires motivation, and monetizing content is a way to motivate.
The photographer earns more than a dozen dollars by taking snail powder. This is the copyright income obtained after the image is distributed by Tutu, after being selected by the creators of Toutiao to be added to an explosive article, and calculated based on factors such as traffic exposure.
For pictures of different qualities, the picture insects will be graded to produce more sophisticated and professional pictures, which will be more profitable for creators after they are provided to enterprises and other users.
In addition, according to the needs of different brands, Tu Chong also launched picture customization services. For example, Tu Chong once cooperated with Huawei to take pictures of new mobile phones. Tu Chong invited photographers in the community to participate in the production. This is also a way of monetizing creation, and it is also a recognition of the copyright of the creator.
Through the use of funds from different parties in different links, a clear copyright chain can be built completely. For platforms and creators, combating piracy and illegal use has always been a problem.
In this pain point, Tuchu’s latest solution is to build a high-quality, upstream and downstream industry chain-oriented copyright protection and service platform through blockchain technology. For producers, the certificate is uploaded to the chain at the moment the picture is released, without the need for complicated procedures and fees for the copyright service center.
Image copyright disputes are numerous and fragmented. A lawsuit requires a long wait from obtaining evidence to trial. A person involved in the trial of image copyright disputes in the Internet Court said that after the copyright was put on the chain, all the evidence will be retrieved online in the Internet Court, and two or three hours of a trial will have results. The efficiency has been greatly improved.
In March of this year, Tutu’s blockchain technology copyright platform has been registered, and more than 8 million works have been registered. Accountability through producer licensing agreements allows the entire copyright chain to be traced, protecting not only content producers but also users of pictures.
In order to avoid the risk of infringement by merchants, on June 8 this year, JD.com also launched a free copyright material platform, which is free for all merchants and users of JD.com. Nowadays, the standardized use of material copyrights has been paid more and more attention, and the platform’s self-built genuine material library has become a trend.
A material content market practitioner commented that various vertical industries, such as some leading financial institutions, are also building their own copyright material libraries. Graphworm’s layout awareness in this respect is indeed earlier. The establishment of a standardized mechanism for copyright use and the effective protection of visual material creation using technology and product form can further promote the prosperity of this content ecology.