500px
500px
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legal form | Private Corporation |
founding | October 31, 2009 |
Seat | 20 Duncan Street Toronto , Canada ![]() |
management | Andy Yang |
Number of employees | 36 |
Website | 500px.com |
500px (pronounced: "five hundred pixels") is an online photo community founded on October 31, 2009 by Oleg Gutsol and Evgeny Tchebotarev (artist name: "Ian Sobolev") . The Toronto- based company is designed to encourage professional and ambitious amateur photographers to upload their best work.
500px is seen as a platform for presenting your work, for inspiration and for making contact with other photographers. The site has over 13 million registered users from 190 countries.
history
In 2003 Evgeny Tchebotarev started 500px as a hobby within the social blogging website LiveJournal while studying business administration at Ryerson University . At that time, the image width of 500 pixels was seen as a suitable size for displaying images on websites and was therefore set as the upper limit for the uploaded images of the community. Uploaded images were manually assessed and only published on the website if they were of sufficient quality to be accepted by the community curators. Tchebotarev subsequently teamed up with Oleg Gutsol, and in early 2009 they began developing a largely automated version of 500px. The image width was expanded to 900 pixels, but the name remained. They launched the new version of the website on October 31, 2009. In February 2012, “flow”, “stories” and “market” were added.
In March 2014, the community entered the licensing market by offering their users the opportunity to offer their uploaded photos on the 500px Prime platform . The photographer was guaranteed 60% of the sales proceeds for sales with an “exclusive license” (image is only sold over 500px), and 30% for “non-exclusive license”.
After the Visual China Group had acted as the largest donor for 500px since 2015, it was announced in February 2018 that it has now acquired 100% of the shares in 500px and thus the company. In the course of the takeover, the company's own licensing platform - which has since been renamed from Prime to Marketplace - was discontinued on June 30, 2018. All future licensing will be handled by VCG for the Chinese market and Getty Images for the rest of the world . Criticism was triggered by the fact that there was no longer any possibility of offering images under a Creative Commons license and, above all, that existing Creative Commons works were removed from the platform.
Even after the takeover, 500px seems to be evolving. On June 4, 2018, the offer was expanded to include a direct message service with which users can communicate privately.
Functions
500px would like to offer every user a chance to be discovered by the community with his pictures through various techniques.
As is generally the case, works can be assigned to specific categories such as fashion , landscape , black and white and provided with keywords and geo-tags . Other users can comment on pictures publicly.
At 500px, each image also has a pulse , which is expressed by a number from 0 to 100. A secret algorithm continuously determines this key figure. It is probably based on the number of clicks, the likes that a picture receives from other users, the number of comments and the pulse of other pictures of the member. The rating also includes how many likes a user gives. The higher the number, the less his like counts . The pulse is decisive for the positioning of the image in the search and in the discover area.
With the Discover function , 500px provides the opportunity to discover new images from previously unknown photographers. The function is divided into the sub-areas Fresh , Upcoming , Popular and Editors Choice , which can also be restricted according to the usual categories. While the latest uploads appear chronologically in Fresh - provided they have all the necessary information such as a category and sufficient keywords - images that have reached a certain pulse are displayed in the Popular area . Upcoming is located between Popular and Fresh . Only new images appear here, but they already have a certain pulse . Editors Choice does not contain images selected by an algorithm, but rather personally curated by guest editors .
These Guest Editors are regularly selected by the 500px operators, whose voluntary task is to put together a selection of images for the Editors Choice area. In return, they get an introduction on the blog of 500px and thus increased attention themselves.
reception
In 2009 the website had around 1,000 users. At the end of November 2012 there were over 1.5 million.
The website's blog was named among the top 25 blogs by Time in 2012 . Michael Muchmore from PC Magazine rated 500px as “good” (3.5 out of 5 points).
controversy
On January 21, 2013, Apple removed the 500px app from the App Store for allegedly displaying pornographic material. A new version with an age rating of 17 and over was released on January 29, 2013.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Meet our team. In: 500px. Accessed July 19, 2018 .
- ^ The community for passionate photographers. In: 500px. Retrieved July 20, 2018 .
- ↑ Ingrid Lunden: 500px Raises Another $ 13M To Take On Getty And Flickr. In: TechCrunch . July 21, 2015, accessed July 19, 2018 .
- ↑ Exciting news, 500px Community! In: 500px. February 26, 2018, accessed July 19, 2018 .
- ↑ 500px + Getty Images: Introducing our new partnership. In: 500px. May 31, 2018, accessed July 19, 2018 .
- ↑ Michael Zhang: 500px Nukes 1M + Creative Commons Photos. In: PetaPixel. July 2, 2018, accessed July 19, 2018 .
- ↑ Introducing direct messaging on 500px, plus, exciting updates coming soon! In: 500px. May 22, 2018, accessed July 19, 2018 .
- ↑ Evgeny Tchebotarev: Who has the highest affection score on 500px? In: Quora . April 6, 2014, accessed July 20, 2018 .
- ↑ Maintenance Update - FAQ. In: 500px. Retrieved September 22, 2019 .
- ↑ Rajat Vaish: work How does 500px? In: Quora . May 27, 2014, accessed July 20, 2018 .
- ↑ Harry McCracken: 25 Best Blogs 2012 - 500px Blog. ( Memento of October 24, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) In: Time . October 8, 2012 (English).
- ↑ Michael Muchmore: 500px. In: PC Magazine . February 28, 2012, accessed July 19, 2018 .
- ↑ Richard Messers: 500px: Apple blocks photo app because of slightly bare skin. In: Spiegel Online . January 23, 2013, accessed July 19, 2018 .
- ↑ Adi Robertson: 500px photo apps pulled from iOS App Store over nude photos (updated: Apple responds). In: The Verge . January 22, 2013, accessed July 19, 2018 .
- ↑ Johanna Stern: Apple Removes 500px Photo App From App Store Over Nudity Complaints. In: ABC News . January 23, 2013, accessed July 19, 2018 .
- ↑ 500px back in Apple app store after 'porn' complaint resolved. In: CBC News . January 29, 2013, accessed July 19, 2018 .