Skillfeed.com, an online video tutorial and learning marketplace run by Shutterstock, is shutting down effective September 30, 2015.
An announcement posted by the Skillfeed team explains:
“Skillfeed is at a crossroads and, after thoughtful consideration and exhausting many different ideas, we have decided to no longer accept new customers or instructors as of today. Skillfeed will continue to offer access to the site for our existing customers through September 30, 2015 before ending our service.”
Skillfeed opened in the summer of 2013. It was a platform where freelancers and others could load video courses and earn money from them.
Other professionals desiring to learn would get a subscription entitling them to take the video courses.
Courses covered technology, marketing, and business topics. Courses were as comprehensive as how to learn search engine optimization, at over 3 hours long. Other courses were very short and specific, such as the 9-minute course “How to Remove Acne with Photoshop.”
The site says it had nearly 95,000 video tutorials from 1,291 instructors. It posted FAQs about the shutdown, which read in part:
“Can I pull the content off the site?
Skillfeed does not have a capability to allow users to download content from site.
Can I view the content elsewhere?
No the content is only accessible on the Skillfeed site unless the contributor has posted their material on other tutorial websites. All content will be completely removed after September 30.”
Instructors will be paid all amounts over $1 due them by October 15, 2015. Existing annual subscribers will get a prorated refund of their unused subscriptions by October 15, 2015.
Back when Skillfeed was launched, the idea was to extend the hugely successful Shutterstock model of a stock image marketplace, to training. Shutterstock Founder and CEO Jon Oringer said at the time, “The idea evolved from our existing customer and contributor communities and quickly expanded to include all digital professionals. Creatives and technology professionals are always looking to improve their skills, and Skillfeed offers high-quality training alongside an all-access membership model.”
Shutterstock has very successfully extended the stock image model to video clips and even music clips.
However, Skillfeed seems not to have caught on with the same overwhelming success. In part, that may be due to the competition of other online training platforms such as Lynda.com (acquired by LindkedIn) and Udemy.com. Also, the demand for training may simply not have been as robust as the demand for stock images and footage.
Shutterstock (NYSE: SSTK) is a giant in the area of providing stock photographs, vectors, illustrations, music and videos to businesses. Headquartered in New York City with a market cap of more than $1 billion, Shutterstock has over 80,000 contributors and a library of over 60 million images and 3 million video clips.
(Small Business Trends licenses Shutterstock images for this site.)
Image: Skillfeed.com
As someone who has content on all the 3 mentioned elearning platforms…my personal opinion is that Skillfeed didn’t put in the effort to make the platform successful.
I mean, look at how aggressive udemy promotions are…look at all the acquisitions made by Pluralsight…look at all the campaigns made by Skillshare.
I think Skillfeed relied too much on the glory of Shutterstock.
Maybe another time they might give this endeavor a second look..but for now…Skillfeed failed at the execution side of thins.
Pissed Off - Thieving SKILLFEED.COM
Skillfeed has also failed at refunding at least one customer – me – money owed as the site is now shut down — on the purchase of a one year site-access package. Because they say they could not find my affiliated email, they now no longer answer my emailed demands for my money back. I even offered them a copy of my bank statement, to get them in touch with my bank, and sent to them, the PayPal transaction documentation. Now it is just no response. THIEVES is an apt name for Skillfeed.com