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500px
Logo
URL500px.com


500px, pronounced five hundred pixels, [1] is an online photography community [2] that was co-founded by Oleg Gutsol and Evgeny Tchebotarev (artistically also known as “Ian Sobolev”). [3] The Toronto based startup [4] launched its Web 2.0 version in 2009 [5] and is aimed at aspiring and professional photographers; [6] encouraging members to upload their best work. [7]

500px is seen as a place to gain exposure, find inspiration and connect photographers with one another. [8] It hosts over 6 million photos [9] and the most popular camera amongst its users is the Canon 5D Mark II. [10]



History

Creation

Evgeny Tchebotarev began 500px in 2003 within the social blogging website Livejournal, [11] working on it as a hobby whilst he completed a business degree at Ryerson University. [12] Back then, 500 pixels was considered a good size for web display [13] and was therefore the limit placed on photos submitted for review to the community.[12] Once photographers submitted their photos they were moderated and only those of a high quality would make it past the community’s curators and be published onto the site.[11]

Relaunch

Scalability issues led to 500px being moved from it’s Livejournal platform and being redesigned incorporating an algorithm to determine a photo’s quality without the need for curators’ input.[11]

Tchebotarev joined forces with Oleg Gutsol and in early 2009 [12] they began work on the mostly automated incarnation of 500px. Image size grew to 900 pixels but the name remained. The two relaunched the site on October 31st, 2009.[11]

In February 2012 the site got another update with Flow, Stories and Market being introduced.[14]

Growth

From 1000 users in 2009 the site has grown significantly, purely through word of mouth: [10]

  • May 2011: 67,000 users (with 27,000 joining in the previous two months). [15]
  • June 2011: 85,000 users (with 45,000 joining in the previous three months). [16]
  • July 2011: 150,000 users.[10]
  • September 2011: 6,000,000 visits per month, 3,000,000 unique visitors, and 50,000,000 page views.[17]
  • October 2011: 6,600,000 visits per month, 54,000,000 page views (a growth of 20 times in the past 12 months). [18]
  • December 2011: 7,000,000 visits per month, 55,000,000 page views, 290,000 users (averaging 35% growth in users per month). [19]

Office space has grown as the site has grown: from Tchebotarev’s apartment[12] to Ryerson University’s Digital Media Zone start-up incubator[19] to the current 500px office located at 317 Adelaide St. West in Toronto, Canada. [20]

Features

Accounts

There are three account options with 500px: Free, Plus at $19.95 per year and Awesome for $49.95 per year. [21] All membership levels have access to the Market feature[22] and the ability to like, and favourite, photos and interact with other users.[23] Free membership limits the user to 10 uploads per week whereas Plus and Awesome accounts get unlimited uploads. Sets and Statistics are available to both Plus and Awesome users but only Awesome users get to create Portfolios. [21]

Browsing

500px has several ways to browse photos: users can search using keywords [24] or visit the pages Popular [25] (photos with a high ranking), Editors’ Choice (handpicked by editors), Upcoming (photos gaining in popularity) and Fresh (newest uploads). [26] Content on all pages is determined by the algorithm with the exception of Editors’ Choice which is updated on a daily basis by 500px staff; [27] approximately 0.03% of photos submitted to 500px make it to Editors’ Choice. [28]

Community & social interaction

Members can ‘Follow’ other users, labeling them as ‘Friends’, [27] and be notified when they upload new photos.[26] The ability to comment underneath photos, and buttons to share photos via Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon and email also add to the sense of community.[24] In addition, each user has a wall, viewable to the public, and enabling users to message one another. [26]

Flow

Introduced in February 2012, to the criticism of many longtime 500px users, Flow replaced the Activity feed.[29] Flow is a visual representation of a user’s activity. It shows images uploaded by friends as well as their interactions on the site such as photos they have liked, favourited or commented on. [14] Flow includes an infinite scroll to continuously load up new content when a user reaches the bottom of the page.[30] Due to user feedback, the Activity feed was reintroduced in addition to Flow. [31]

Market

After previously partnering with Fotomoto for photo sales, 500px launched their current Market platform in February 2012[32] which takes care of printing, delivery and payment processing on behalf of their members.[14] The Market allows users to sell photos as canvas prints or HD digital downloads. Canvas prints come in two sizes: 24”x36” or 30”x30” with a 1.5” frame. They can be purchased for $199, of which the photographer receives 70% of the revenue after all costs have been subtracted. Digital downloads are 1920x1080 in size and can be purchased for $2.99 with the photographer making approximately $2 per sale.[22] The Market is available to all users of 500px provided their images meet the required specifications. [33] Currently canvas prints can only be shipped to the US and Canada.[22]

Stories

500px’s blog functionality got an update with the February 2012 redesign, being renamed Stories. [29] Similar to The Big Picture,[32] Stories provide the largest view of a photo on the entire site. Users can upload images directly to a story or select from previously uploaded images.[29] Users can describe each image individually, add a map location to show where the photos were taken, and add technical information about the camera and lens used to capture the shot.[14] The images and text appear in one scrollable page.[29]

Statistics

Available to paying members only, Statistics provides the user with basic analytics about their 500px account. As well as discovering the number of likes, dislikes, favourites, and comments that each photo receives over a time period of the user’s choice, it also plots the information on an interactive graph and displays the user’s most engaged followers and friends.[21]

Sets

With the introduction of the Plus account in April 2012 came the ability to organize photos into Sets. This feature is available for paid memberships only.[21]

Portfolios

Portfolios, for Awesome members only, [26] allow users the option to create a website of their work with a choice of templates, [26] the ability to link a custom domain, the option to remove all 500px branding as well as being able to link it up with Google Analytics for in-depth monitoring of traffic and activity.[23]

Organizer

The Organizer holds all images uploaded to a user’s 500px account in a Library, with HTML5 drag and drop uploading available for browsers that support it. Drag and drop is also enabled to move photos from the Library to where the user wants to see them on the site. Users can edit and delete photos directly from the Organizer.[29]

Funding

In early 2011, with traffic to the site increasing and the cost of bandwidth rising accordingly, 500px could no longer be funded by its co-founders. They opted to use a website called AngelList that allows start-ups to make connections with investors. [34] With help from AngelList’s Brendan Baker, 500px improved its profile on the site and began getting calls from high profile investors in Silicon Valley. [35] After two years of getting by on minimal investment, 500px secured a $525,000 Series A round of financing from ff Venture Capital, High Line Venture Partners and Deep Creek Capital.[16]

Technology

Algorithm, Pulse & Affection

500px has an algorithm in place to allow recently uploaded photos of a high standard to be displayed at the forefront of the site. Views, votes, favourites and dislikes all contribute to a photo’s rating or ‘Pulse’.[29] The higher the Pulse the more likely it is to get to the Popular page and the higher the chance it has of being seen by other users. [36] The algorithm allows all users, not just those with a following, to have a chance to get their work to the front page of the Popular photos, increasing exposure. [37] The mathematical equations in place also take into account the freshness of an image with Likes/Dislikes counting for fewer points as they build up and the Pulse gradually decreasing with updates.[38] This results in the Popular page always displaying fresh content and motivates users to regularly upload new images.[39] Each user also has an overall rating titled ‘Affection’. Taking into account the likes and favourites they have received across all photos, it is a reliable indication of how popular a photographer is within the community.[29]

Design

500px is built almost entirely in HTML5 and Javascript [40] which is described on the site as “Handmade using ecologically sustainable code.”[41] The focus is on the image with 280 x 280 pixel thumbnails[7] and individual images being 900 pixels along the longest side.[7] When viewing an individual photo’s page the photo is the dominant part of the screen; [26] clicking on it will allow it to be viewed in a light box setting with the page surrounding it darkening.[29]

API

In August 2011,[42] 500px launched a public API (application programming interface) allowing third party developers to create applications using the content and functionality of 500px.[43]


Apps

iPad

Released for free in October 2011,[44] the 500px iPad application achieved 100,000 downloads in its first week alone.[45] The app is a redesigned version of the 500px website with the ability to swipe through images individually or view them as a slideshow, [46] with or without music.[47] Users spend an average of 42 minutes browsing the site via the app.[48]

In March 2012 PC Magazine named the app one of the 100 best iPad apps[49] and Wired included it in a round-up of retina display photography apps despite it not being retina ready at that time:

“We did not feel it was necessary to rush a new Retina version of our app since our application is about the photos, and the photos look fantastic already,” 500px’s iOS developer Ash Furrow told Wired. [50]

Retina graphics were added to the 500px app in April 2012 along with the ability to download HD versions of purchased photos.[51]

In May 2012 came the decision to have family-inappropriate content hidden by default with users being required to log in to their web accounts to enable the viewing of such content.[52]

Lightroom plug-in

A 500px Lightroom plug-in was released in December 2011 and allows users to sync their photos in Lightroom with their 500px account. Photos can be published directly to 500px via the plug-in and comments and statistics related to the user’s photos can be viewed within Lightroom. [53]

Android

In April 2012 the free Android smartphone and tablet app was released allowing users to browse photos, follow ‘Friends’ and share comments on an Android device. [54]

Mac uploader

With 30,000 photos being manually uploaded daily and 25% of users on Mac machines, 500px decided to create a Mac-uploader, launching the app in April 2012. [55]

Third Party

500px’s public API has been used to create third-party applications such as ISO 500, PhotoStacker for 500px,500px Land[18] and Brilliance.[56]

Competition

Flickr

500px is often compared to the photo sharing community Flickr, with many dubbing it a “Flickr alternative”. [53] The two sites are, however, aimed at different audiences[24] with Flickr appealing to a wide range of styles and skills,[27] targeting anybody that takes photos[38] and 500px focusing on the highly skilled and professional photographers.[24]

“We see Flickr more as a photo storage site, where anyone can upload all their photos in one place and share them with their friends. We’re interested in getting the best photography in the world in one place, and growing the best photography community.”[57]

"I don't think we are in direct competition with [Flickr]. Yes, Flickr is a large and a well established photo community, but our focus and our goals are not identical to theirs."[58]

Controversy

Terms of Service

On April 12th, 2012 500px’s Terms of Service rose to the top of popular site Hacker News, garnering attention for displaying full-on lawyer speak on the left-hand side of the page and summing up the legalese into basic points on the right-hand side. The resulting discussion on the Terms was mixed, with positive feedback such as ‘awesome’[59] and ‘one of the cleanest in the industry’ [60] alongside negative feedback that believes 500px may have put themselves at undue risk.[61]

Dislike button

If users ‘like’ a photo or add a photo to their favourites the photo’s rating, or pulse, increases. If users click on ‘I don’t like this photo’ the pulse decreases. [62] The ability to dislike an image on 500px has been met with contention. Many believe it attracts trolling behaviour with users purposely disliking other users’ images for their own benefit. [63][64][65] To reduce the likelihood of this only users with an ‘affection’ score above a certain level can dislike images and, after a user dislikes five images, they are asked to provide an explanation for their actions.[62]

Collaborations/partnerships

Fotomoto

In February 2011, [66] 500px collaborated with Fotomoto to enable users to sell their work directly from their portfolio. [67] The partnership ended in September 2011, with both parties sending out conflicting emails to users, resulting in much public discussion. [68][66] [69] 500px launched their current photo-selling platform, Market, in February 2012.[32]

Flipboard

Flipboard announced 500px integration with their Version 1.6 update in November 2011. 500px users can now sign into their 500px account directly from Flipboard.[70]

Events

On Saturday, November 19th and Sunday, November 20th 2011, 500px hosted their first Pixel Hack Day at the ING Direct Café in Toronto. The free, weekend long, app-development event asked for participants to create an app using an open API. [71]


References

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