Digital Railroad site taken offline, customers flock to PhotoShelter
Digital Railroad, the photo management and microstock agency that on Oct. 15 announced staffing cuts, has taken its site offline, and even the company’s most prominent former customers are scrambling to find another hosting service and keep their photo archives alive.
While users were told Oct. 28 they would have 24 hours to access their archive, the Digital Railroad (DRR) site appeared to be completely pulled offline less than 12 hours later.
NCAA Photos Director of Technology Brett Wilhelm said his company may have to deal with an online archive “blackout” as they migrate to DRR competitor PhotoShelter, which has offered three free months of service to former DRR customers.
“It’s as unfortunate turn of events, but I think a lot of people in the industry kind of smelled it coming,” Wilhelm said. But just the same, he added, “We’re going to have a period of readjustment, because it certainly came faster than we really anticipated.”
Wilhelm said talk among the industry had been that there wasn’t as much interest or participation in DRR’s Marketplace as the company might have hoped. The Marketplace, a micro stock sales service, had launched in April 2007. PhotoShelter had attempted to launch a similar service, the PhotoShelter Collection, but that closed in September after less than a year in operation.
DRR had been given more than $15 million in venture capital funding since it launched in 2004. It’s still not clear what led to the company’s sudden, precipitous collapse.
Reports have surfaced throughout the Web indicating that many photographers haven’t been able to access their archives at all, both because traffic at DRR’s site bogged down its bandwidth and because archive access was pulled much sooner than expected. For some, that blow comes just after paying their annual dues.
PhotoShelter CEO Allen Murabayashi told the National Press Photographer’s Association his company had received hundreds of calls from distressed photographers who had trouble downloading their images from DRR.
In addition to managing the archives for NCAA Photos, DRR had partnered with dozens of major clients including the National Press Photographers Association and the California-based stock photography agency CalSport Media.
Visitors to www.digitalrailroad.net now see the following message:
Oct. 28, 2008
To our valued Members:
We’re sorry to inform you that Digital Railroad (DRR) has shut down.
On October 15th we reported that the company had reduced its staff and was aggressively pursuing additional financing and/or a strategic partner. Unfortunately, those efforts were unsuccessful. Therefore Digital Railroad has been forced to suspend all operations.
This archive may only be accessible for the next 24 hours.
Digital Railroad has attracted a loyal set of members. Thank you for allowing us to serve the photographic community these past few years.
All questions pertaining to claims should be addressed to:
Digital Railroad, Inc.
c/o Diablo Management Group
1452 N. Vasco Road, #301
Livermore, CA 94551
Diablo Management, which is managing DRR’s liquidation, is a San Francisco Bay area company that specializes in winding down the operations of ailing businesses.
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