By Daryl Lang

LIFE, the prestigious photojournalism brand that last appeared regularly in 2007 as a thin newspaper insert, is in development to be re-launched next year as a photography Web site targeted at consumers.  

LIFE.com will let users view images from LIFE's expansive historic archive and from Getty Images, which will stream its latest news, sports and entertainment photos onto the site.

The new service is a 50-50 joint venture between Getty Images and Time Inc. The partnership marries two companies that have decidedly different histories: a legacy print media publisher and an all-digital content company.

Details of the site were revealed at the MIXX Conference Sept. 23 in New York.

The new site is scheduled to launch in the first quarter of 2009 with 6 million images from the LIFE archive, according to LIFE president Andrew Blau. It will add about 3,000 new images a day from Getty Images, which will feed most of its editorial images onto the new site.

Blau demonstrated the site on stage with Catherine Gluckstein, vice president of iStockphoto and consumer markets at Getty Images. Blau will be CEO of the joint venture and Gluckstein will be CFO. Also present for the launch was Time Inc. managing editor Jim Kelly.

LIFE.com will be organized by topic, by geographic location and on a timeline. Users will also be able to search the site. The site will earn revenue from advertising and e-commerce, notably by selling on-demand custom photo books.
 
In the demonstration, each channel on the site had a sponsor – Starbucks sponsoring Celebrities, PetSmart sponsoring Animals, and HP sponsoring "My Life" where users can build a collection of historic photos set on a timeline of their own life.

Blau said there will be some features for consumers to add their own images, but the site will be primarily for displaying professional work. User-contributed photos will be segregated from the professional content, he said.

The demo site did not reveal any groundbreaking features. In the demonstration, images filled up only a portion of the screen – roughly the same size as on Jamd, Getty's existing consumer site, or Daylife.com, a news site that publishes images from the Getty Images wire.

Images on LIFE.com will be displayed in medium resolution – suitable for printing on a home printer – and will be watermarked, according to Blau and Gluckstein. Blau said users will be able to share their saved photo collections through other services like Facebook.

Mobile applications are in the works, including an iPhone application for playing the LIFE Picture Puzzle game.

The new site will be the latest in a long line of LIFE-branded media. As a weekly magazine from 1936 to 1972, LIFE published some of the 20th century's best photojournalism. LIFE ran as a monthly magazine from 1978 to 2000 and as a weekly newspaper insert from 2004 to 2007. The brand is still used on books and special issues.

For Getty, the association with LIFE is another way to monetize its large collection of editorial photography, which has mostly been aimed at clients like newspapers and magazines that pay to license photos.

Time Inc. and Getty hoped to make a splash by announcing the site at MIXX, a conference about online advertising. Just before the announcement, hundreds of copies of LIFE: The Classic Collection, an over-sized photo book priced at $50, were placed on chairs at the conference.

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