After rethinking how to renovate the online stock image experience, Getty Images - one of the world’s largest and most trafficked sources for stock imagery - collected over five million royalty-free stock photos and vector illustrations with the launch of Thinkstock. It also introduced a completely unique pricing structure to the sector, allowing users to approach the service through a subscription basis rather than purchasing stock imagery a la carte. More specifically, the site offers a choice of a daily number of image downloads (max 25 / day) - or a monthly or annual subscription, and further allows users to purchase image packs for a standardized price.

In addition to traditional online advertising, establishing a robust presence on Twitter was a major component of developing a nimble, social, and available presence.

In bringing Thinkstock customer service to social media, Thinkstock developed a custom URL shortener (thnks.tk) whereby a toolbar that allows the user to tweet any image search request to a live human is embedded in the link. Within minutes of the tweet request, a lightbox with the best images is tweeted back to the user making a tedious image search obsolete. The service itself, brings a completely new human element to stock image searches where it previously was non-existent.

With the launch of the Social Art Buyer in June 2010, @Thinkstock began tweeting up to 20 inspiration tweets a day using the the thnks.tk URL shortener, invariably introducing the iconic, thin, blue toolbar to design, art, photography, and illustration fans all across twitter. All the while, @Thinkstock was gradually gaining credence as a legitimate source for inspiring content.

This personable and hands-on approach to image search caused quite a lot of chatter online, and led to Shutterstock - one of Thinkstock’s largest competitors - to not only poach image search requests and offer up Shutterstock alternatives, but incorrectly implement their own toolbar which houses a search field that merely searches the site’s image database. Thinkstock’s reputation further escalated after some quick thinking in response to @Ritalin - an ECD from Chile - who jokingly asked if he’s going to receive an iPad for being @Thinkstock’s 1500th follower. He received a 3G iPad and this letter 10 days later. All this continued activity tripled twitter impressions to over 1.5 million in the month of June alone and Thinkstock.com has enjoyed an additional 5,000 viewers / month on average. Furthermore, Klout.com - a service measuring online influence on Twitter - categorizes @Thinkstock as a curator, which they describe as someone who finds the most interesting web content and shares it with a large audience.