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Lefty — Discover and use Instagram photos
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Replies
@alicelthwaite Thanks a lot!
1) A very vast majority of photos taken in the past 6 months are 1080x1080, while older ones are 640x640. We'll be adding that information to the product very shortly.
2) Any reward is on top of the 10$ a month. All of the reward goes to the instagrammer + 15% tip for Lefty (note that you may also request photos for free if you do not have a budget to reward the instagrammer).
@christian_lefty Cool - do you know how much an instagrammer would normally accept for a photo? What payment system do you use?
@alicelthwaite it depends a lot on the instagrammer (many instagrammers will accept for free if they know/like the brand or business). We typically recommend 5-10$ for fairness and to get the best approval rates. More than that is relevant for pros/semi-pros.
For payment we accept all major credit cards or paypal (uses braintree under the hood) and we reward the instagrammer via paypal.
Wow, I personally do a lot of search on Instagram, this just became my official search engine for Insta !! Great work guys
love the look and feel of it. definately something i'll dig into in greater detail. I can see a $10 account coming for a few clients. Well done! @lefty_thomas :)
Unrelated to your business model, this actually solves the problem for me of searching for multiple hashtags in instagram. Great design and UX. At times, the animation can slow things down for me, but overall, it makes for a more pleasant experience. Maybe just a little tweaking to nail it 100%.
This is off topic, but I recognized your goo drip-in button on the search page uses my code from a codepen I did :D
I feel honored to have inspired someone with my goo pen.
Wow one of the better designed sites I have seen in a while.
@lefty_thomas only thing I am a bit confused about is how are you contacting the owner of the content? Since the "monetize your feed" option is not live yet
@jamesknaus thanks! Once there is a photo you wish to use, you press "ask permission to use" which will take you to a screen where you can send the photo owner a request to use their content. The request will appear as a comment on their Instagram photo
Hi @lefty_thomas,
Great product! I got four questions about your product at the moment:
1. When I get a photo license, am I the only company allowed to use that photo? (Imagine Brand A and Brand B using the same image to promote their product at the same time...)
2. Can you/are you verify/verifying a photo on Lefty is unique and the Instagram account that posted it *is* the copyright owner or uses the photo with consent? (Imagine: I buy and use a photo from Lefty only to discover somebody else than the Instagram account owns the copyright and they get angry at me!)
3. Is there a way to know the dimensions of the pphoto want before I purchase it? (Imagine: I buy a photo from Lefty and put it on a billboard and it looks all blurry!)
4. Once I purchase a photo, is there a way to get a legally binding contact? (Imagine that I buy a photo and then the owner claims I have no right to use the photo)
Thank you for taking the time to build Lefty and answering my questions
@grooveplex Thanks for your questions Barend
1. You are the only company that can use the photo (unless the photo owner has given their permission to another company)
2. Lefty team double checks the authenticity of the photo each time there is a photo request
3. Dimensions are 640x640 and we will roll our 1080x1080 in the upcoming days that you will be able to filter out
4. The photo owner will have signed our T&C's that should cover you legally. when they agree to let you use the photo. We take a screenshot of every transaction. Also, if you are planning to use the photo commercially, we suggest that you ask us for to get model releases that we will try to obtain directly from the photo owner!
@grooveplex the photo owner has 36 hours to respond your request. If they haven't responded or have responded negatively, you will be notified and will not be charged (you are charged only when a photo is approved for use)
6. Do you review images for trademark items, properties, or people that the copyright owner cannot give usage rights to? (Imagine that an image has people in it, but those people have not signed a model release.) @grooveplex @lefty_thomas
@kmullett. Thanks. Indeed there are many things we review after owner's acceptance and before a photo is approved to be used.
1. First of all we check that the person who posted the photo is effectively the author. This allows you for all so called editorial uses of the content.
2. If there are no people, sensitive buildings/scenes or protected trademarks on the picture, we allow for a commercial use of the photo.
3. Otherwise we can take care of the obtention of the relevant clearance on demand (we get signed the model releases in your case).
You will be always notified by us of such things when the author has approved his photo to be used. Hope this answers your question :)
Hi Thomas,
Nice Product,
Will you try to extend the product to other social network?
@lefty_thomas, cool product! Congratulations! Does the service support videos? Tried a few searches but only photos showed up.
@tamasszakal thanks! We don't support videos right now but it is definitely in the product roadmap :)
Hey all,
I am Thomas, one Lefty co-founders. We built Lefty to help businesses discover and use Instagram photos.
Marketers and publishers need an unprecedented amount of content to engage with their audience. User-generated content, especially Instagram, is an amazing source of photos that has been difficult to discover and make use of so far. Lefty tries to ease the discovery of stunning Instagram photos and their digital rights management.
Lefty is:
1. A one of-a-kind search engine on public Instagram content
- Multi tag search
- Fancy filters (geo, categories, colors, time)
- Relevancy, recency and popularity ranking
2. A platform to manage the rights of digital user-generated photos
- Once you want to use a photo, ask owner's permission to use the photo and name a price reward
- The photo owner will either choose to take their price reward or donate it to UNICEF
Looking forward to hearing your feedback!
Cheers
Thomas
These people are scam artists. The entire system crashed for a week so I asked them to extend my subscription. One owner said that they would but then another said that they could not do this and I would just have to buy it again. I recommend everyone stays far away from this product and look into one of many alternatives.
Pros:Good idea.
Cons:The software was very slow and lagged a lot. It crashed regularly and did not seem ready to be used despite launching in 2015.
Really slick and fast when it comes to search images around a topic or a place and the filters are really super accurate for image recognition! Well done Team Lefty!
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