Tweak (company)

Stockbyte was Europe's first digital stock photography library, founded by Jerry Kennelly in 1996.[16][17][18]

Stockbyte was originally called Stockpix and was later renamed. Stockbyte originally offered CDs containing 100 images relating to a particular theme.[19] The first products were launched at Macworld in San Francisco in January 1997.[20] Two years later, Stockbyte and its partners offered online downloads of all of its imagery.[21]

Stockbyte went on to work with partner agencies who licensed their images.[22] Magazines such as Time and Newsweek carried its images on their covers and global organisations like McDonald's, Blue Cross and the Federal Bureau of Investigation licensed their imagery.[23]

Stockbyte used business intelligence software to measure performance of images by genre in order to react of changing user demands and to capture the most important images.

In 2004, Kennelly and his team created a second brand called Stockdisc, which made images available at a lower price to Stockbyte.[24][25]

In April 2006, both brands were acquired by Getty Images for $135 million.[26] The unsuccessful bidders were Bill Gates' company Corbis and Jupiterimages Corporation.[27][28][29][30]

Kennelly has since gone on to found Tweak, as mentioned above.[31][32][33]