Lobster, being a marketplace where user-generated content is licensed, is now releasing a universal search feature that will enable brands and publishers to look for this type of content across a number of social platforms.
In explaining how this new initiative came into being, its founder, Olga Egorsheva, said “We realized how difficult it was to search across Instagram for content using multiple criteria, and even when you find content you want, the process of licensing it can be painstaking. We’re solving that problem of search, and then facilitating the licensing process for our users.”
So, simply put. this search functionality will allow users to look for specific imagery on various social media platforms and then request for a license for that image through the platform itself. This initiative creates potential to license content from everyday users.
Until now, and with Lobster, you can access content from Instagram and Flickr but the company has plans to expand it to Vine, Twitter, Facebook and Vimeo.
As for the process, users can select the photos that they like and Lobster then contacts the owner of the photo be it through an email, direct message or even an Instagram comment depending on the platform thus setting up a deal for the photo to be licensed out.
Currently, Flickr users can charge upto $3 per image while Instagram can receive up to $2 per photos but this amount can increase depending on the demand for the image in question.
Lobster was launched at Disrupt London in October 2014 and clearly wants to be the Google of user-generated content with this recent move.