Post-Flickr Blogging: Thoughts on 500px

For the past couple of months a portion of my energy has been dedicated to the back end of this blog. Namely, I am working on redesigning the layout and restructuring how my content is stored and organised – something I should have done earlier, and can't put off any longer. It’s a huge project, but once it’s done, the blog should be cleaner, more visually current, better suited for browsing content by topic, and easier for me to maintain. 

While it wasn't the main impetus, one thing that finally nudged me to get on top of the blog revamp was the "demise" (okay, redesign) of flickr. Like many bicycle bloggers and photographers, I've been relying on flickr for years to host, display and share my (thousands of) images. As someone with more than a rudimentary knowledge of the internets, I was aware of the risks of hosting images via a 3rd party provider. And even though I paid for a "Pro" account, I knew that I paid too little for the services I was getting and that the other shoe was bound to drop sometime. I expected this other shoe to come in the form of changes in pricing structure. Instead it came in the form of flickr, without a word of warning, dispensing with its Pro accounts altogether and turning into a dramatically less elegant, slower and harder to use version of its former self. I will not go into an anti-flickr rant here. But I will point you to this eloquent summary that reflects my own disappointments. To be clear, flickr still exists and my pictures remain on it, for now. But the service is not the same and I am seeking alternatives. 

One site that's come up in flickr refugee chatter has been 500px. Having met a couple of Irish photographers who use it, I finally gave it a try. I know that many visitors here are into photography and also seeking flickr alternatives, so I hope my feedback is useful.

A Canadian startup, 500px is a photo sharing site aimed specifically at aspiring and professional photographers. The design prevents users from dumping entire folders of images straight from their camera cards, encouraging instead a more thoughtful, selective approach. The layout is (for the most part) clean and portfolio-like. Users can organise their images into sets. They can also control which images show up in their photo stream/ entry page. This is a really nice feature, not available on many other photo sharing sites (which usually simply display your latest uploads first).

Uploading to 500px is a rather involved process. The system resists batch uploads, wanting you to describe and label each image individually before posting. This is fine if you are using the service as a portfolio of only your finest work, not so much if you want to upload your work in sets (as bloggers and event photographers tend to do).

Embedding pictures into web pages and blogposts is straightforward, with the code easily and obviously accessible from the main image page. However, it is not practical to use 500px for hosting images if your site receives heavy traffic, as the system limits users (even those with professional accounts) to 10GB of transfer per month. In layman's terms: If your blog is picture-heavy and receives over 100 unique visitors per day, you will likely exceed this limit. For comparison, this blog receives over 5,000 visitors per day, so hot-linking my images via 500px is out of the question.

As far as a professional portfolio display, 500px is great to use with one glaring exception: The intrusive likes/favourites/voting/comments system. Whether they want to or not, every user receives an overall "affection" rating that is displayed prominently in their header and is calculated based on the activity their pictures generate from other users. Every single image is likewise rated based on the likes, favourites, votes, and comments it receives. Aside from these ratings being distracting in of themselves (and, in my view, at odds with the otherwise professional feel of the site), they also invite spam and generic comments fishing for return likes. Such comments can be flagged (and moderators do remove them), but they cannot be deleted or disabled by the user directly, as far as I can tell. In fact, I would love to disable the entire "affection" system, but 500px does not allow it. Many others have echoed my concerns, and there is chatter of the ranking system being toned down in the future. I will wait a bit to see whether that happens before deciding if I keep my account (definitely not if the "affection" and spammy comment stuff is there to stay).

In short, I find 500px to be a mixed bag. As far as exhibiting photographic work, it could be a brilliant service if it weren't for the intrusive rankings system. It is also odd that the wonderfully easy to use marketplace makes it possible to sell downloads and "prints on canvas"(!) but not prints on paper.

As far as being of use to bloggers for embedding images into their posts... err, only if you have a lightly trafficked blog which you do not anticipate growing. Otherwise, no, 500px is not the right platform for that.

I will continue to explore other possibilities and report if I find anything interesting. But most likely, I will host images on my own server and may try to set up my own portfolio-type system for browsing (and possibly purchasing) interesting images. Flickr was good while it lasted - in particular for the online cycling and bicycle enthusiast community. Alas, nothing lasts forever. I thank you for your patience as this blog goes through its own changes, and, as always, thank you for reading Lovely Bicycle.