Why I’m leaving Flickr for 500px
In a word, quality.
And since 500px’s introduction of an “in between membership” of only $20/year, the choice has become pretty clear. Bundle all that up with Flickr’s prudish attitude towards nudity and man, home run for 500px.
Take a look at Flickr’s page.
Now compare that to 500px’s.
There’s no comparison. Your images are displayed nicely. Flickr gives you an abundant amount of “white” space, surrounded by LOTS of ugly links. 500px fills that empty space with more photos. And when you click on a photo to view it, Flickr gives you just a slightly larger version than what was on the homepage. 500px, in contrast, displays your images at their full size. You’re not forced to click the “+” button to magnify it.
Flickr came on the scene in 2004 and has remained virtually unchanged in the years since. What began as a resourceful repository for a professional’s work has quickly turned into a hodge-podge of mediocrity. There are still some fine photographers on Flickr, sure, but just as the filmmakers have left YouTube for Vimeo. Pro photographers are leaving Flickr for 500px.
So what about you? What are you looking for in an image hosting site? Let’s hear your rants. Should you stay or should you go?
Posted on May 4, 2012, in Business, Social Media, Tech and tagged 500px, flickr, image hosting, nudity, photography, photos, portfolio, site, social. Bookmark the permalink. 4 Comments.
My Flickr Pro account expired today and I’ve been thinking of taking the jump over to 500px for the reasons you outlined above. The only shame is the lack of support for porting across – surely 500px should have some sort of web-tool to make it nice and easy to switch?!. Also, all my photos are stored in iPhoto and it seems that the only way to upload them to 500px is to export them from iPhoto as a folder then upload them to 500px – potentially losing some of the EXIF data along the way.
Yeah. Agreed. Flickr makes it so easy. I use iPhoto for family and misc. photos. I use Aperture for my pro stuff. Both are tied to Flickr really nicely.
It’s just, Flickr hasn’t changed in years. It seriously looks like its straight out of the early days of the Internet. As big as they are, you’d think they be innovating all the time.
My account expires at the end of this month. I have to think really hard about REALLY switching 100%. I might put my pro stuff on 500px and keep my Flickr for personal stuff. Dunno, tough decision. If 500px was tied into Apple the way Flickr is, it’d be a much easier decision.
And as far as the nudity goes: Flickr treats nudity as porn; 500px treats nudity as art. As an artist, I really appreciate this about 500px. They don’t insult me. They know that porn is all over the web; if I’m looking at it on an image hosting site, I’m probably their for reasons other than for spank material. Come on, are we still in high school?
Another turn off for me is that I use my photo hosting site as both a place to show off my pictures to my friends and family and as an online backup of my entire library. Whilst 500px stores full-res photos in a backup database, the easily accessible ones are cropped to 900 pixels. I can’t imagine the hassle I’d have to go to if I wanted to retrieve my 13k photo library from 500px in full-res in case of an emergency. I think I’ll be renewing my Flickr Pro subscription. Begrudgingly.
Yeah… I’ve thought about it as well. For the time being, I will stick with Flickr. But don’t think I won’t be keeping my eyes open for change. Either Flickr gets better, or it’s competition does. And 500px is still a young company. Lots of fire in those guys. I see good things to come. Flickr… wakeup buddy. 500px is right around the corner from you.