Much has been made over the past few weeks about Getty Images allowing the free embedding of over 35 million images from Getty’s vast library. The Verge ran a glowing piece and Neville Hobson summarized a good bit of the early coverage. While I commend Getty Images on trying to evolve their business model in the era of the Internet, here’s the reality:

I will NOT use this service – and I can’t imagine why anyone else would who wants their content found via social networks.

Here is one screenshot to show why Getty Image’s service fails.. I used a Getty Images embed in my last post here and this is what happened when I tried to share the link on Facebook:

Here’s a second screenshot of sharing the post out in Google+:

Do you see the problem?

WHERE IS THE IMAGE FROM GETTY IMAGES???

That’s right… IT’S NOT THERE!

The image appears in the post itself, of course, but it doesn’t appear when you try to share the image out in social networks.

Which is… often… THE ENTIRE POINT of why I am including an image in a blog post. I want something visual that will illustrate the points I’m making in the post – but also that will be attractive when the post is shared out on social media.

So for me this is a reason why I will pretty much never use this new offer from Getty Images.

There are host of other issues, as well, as outlined by Brian Krogsgard in a recent post, but for me the one that kills the whole deal is the lack of the ability for the image to appear in social sharing.

Again, I commend Getty Images on trying to figure out how to evolve their business in the Internet age, but this implementation needs to evolve before it will be useful for people like me.

What do you think? Are you planning to use this new service?

I recorded an audio commentary on this issue as well:

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