500px And Why it Works
January 18, 2012
Posted by Al Ingham
So a relatively new revelation in the online photography world is 500px. As if out of nowhere, it has appeared and taken a foot hold in the “professional” photography stage, a place once held down in monopoly by Flickr. At first I was hesitant, probably because I was upgraded to “Pro” in Flickr, and wasn’t about to pay to use 500px’s fully awesome features. But upon winning a years subscription, I began to get a little bit more involved. So here’s my thoughts on why 500px has taken such a foothold in the online world of photography.
Please take time to have a look through my 500px.com profile and my Flickr profile to see what I’m talking about.
1. Socialise: One of the most important things is making the experience social. People log in, interact, comment, favourite, like… All these things we have become used to with the likes of Facebook. 500px does this very elegantly and simply. Its very clear how to make comments, how to find and add friends, and how to build a favourites list. Flickr tried this with “Groups”. They don’t work.
2. Finding New Photos: A big part of the success of 500px is the ease it takes to browse through other’s photos. “New” photos are listed all the time, and are categorised under headings like Popular, Upcoming, and Fresh. Browsing through photos for inspiration has never been easier.
3. Look and Feel: Lets face it. Black is the new pink. I say this in relation to Flickr’s theme (which has remained unchanged since forever). 500px makes it easy to change the look and feel of your portfolio by introducing themes. All of this is important, because the end result is that the user’s photos look stunning, and people will continue to look and browse through their photos. On top of this, the general look and feel of the back end and admin area is very much following general design trends of 2010 onwards. Flickr seems to be stuck back in the nineties.
4. Trends: You can’t help but realise that part of the reason why 500px has become popular is because it is a trend at the moment. It is new and fresh and people want to try it out and utilise it as much as possible. Flickr is old hat. What it has done, it has done very well. But its like an old sportsman. They were once great, but the longer they struggle on, the less respect you have for them until they retire. Then you miss them.
5. Yahoo!: The reality is, Yahoo buying Flickr was the worst thing that happened. It became brutally annoying to sign up for a Yahoo account, and link it with your Flickr account and then have to keep on signing in because of Yahoo’s stupid 2 week login rule. Yahoo has been on the way out for a long time thanks to Google expanding their services.
There are some areas that 500px doesn’t have it over Flickr. Flickr allows you to stream photos to other websites through ATOM or RSS feeds. Obviously I’d expect 500px to begin to build this area within the next few years. All the other benefits that Flickr has is in result to the fact they they have been a monopoly in the market for so long, and so these benefits have been built. Things like the Flickr Lightroom Plugin is established, iPhone app, and WordPress plugins are all well established and work well for users. Given time however, and there’s no doubt that Flickr will start to lose its monopoly, especially when 500px begins to offer more and more of the services that Flickr currently offers.
For me: I will still continue to upload to Flickr, just as I will continue to try out 500px. At this stage, both have their benefits. I suspect however, that once 500px offers RSS feeds, WordPress plugins etc… I could see myself ditching Flickr all together and moving over to 500px permanently.
What you think?
I'd love to know your thoughts.