The desire to share is great among creative individuals, but the will to consume that which has been shared isn’t as great.
Most people it seems take a casual approach. They will look at the Editors Choice, the images trending as popular and then perhaps new images from their favorites. However the “Fresh” category goes largely untouched as hundreds of images get uploaded and are NA for a LONG time.
When you look at the statistics of those photographers that are “popular” and have significant favorites and images views against those that aren’t widely viewed you will see that this observation is true.
Case and point, I have over 2100 views, 99 favorites and as of 9/6/2011 a Affection score of 280. I have no idea if that is good or bad. I have seen people that are very good photographers get that level of activity with a single upload mainly because of their favorite list, following and overall popularity. While this is to be expected, it makes it hard for others to be noticed.
I think this is perhaps why I like the model of OneExposure (1x.com) where photos are reviewed by peers first to see if they pass peer review. Then they are subjected to Executive Review if you will in the form of judges that represent the embodiment of the site. This way, quality is maintained across the site and everyone gets a fair shake. You can still upload whatever you want to 1X, but that doesn’t mean it will be in the “Sites Gallery” but can reside in your personal gallery. This approach eliminates the popular vote and exposure and creates a more level playing field. (please note while I deem this an interesting approach, it has its own issues as well).
As an experiment to tie this back to my own personal images I decided to not promote my account or images over the weekend. Expecting rather anemic traffic, I decided that there would be no new uploads and no promotions. This way I could see if drive by traffic existed.
It doesn’t…..
Not a single change over the long weekend. Once Monday hit and I posted an image of the day on twitter, I immediately had image views, received a few favorites and some comments. While these sites are great for hosting your portfolio and perhaps selling images (though I doubt it) they aren’t real good for exposure or being found/discovered. In fact, despite all of the noise on Flickr it still seems to be the go-to place for photographers to get discovered.
I really like 500px. The galleries are excellent, the site is elegant and photographers here (Particularly from Russia) are AMAZING. The community is thin, and largely exists only because new photographers are trying to get exposure by giving out favorites and comments in hopes that very behavior will be reciprocated.
i only watch the fresh sector, no editors choice, never get the felling that there are 5,000 pictures uploaded per minute, as in flickr…
Hey Julio,
Thanks for leaving a comment. I do agree 500px isnt like Flickr in terms of volume, but being so new people aren’t exploring as the do on JPGmag, OneExpsoure or other sites. Perhaps the issue is timing and posting at the right time to make sure you get the most exposure.
Thanks again for the comment!
Hi David,
As per your request from your blog posting –
This is a very big problem here on this forum, and trying to get a following by adding them to favourites just to get votes is actually not a good way of doing things. This type of practice does not get your work out to the people who you really want to see it, to me it is like a bunch of ants all running around to get the scraps and inevitably a lot will just move of in another direction.
I do agree that 500px should start limiting the amount of images per person, awesome or not awesome… I spend hours just looking through average images to find just one really good one which I use for inspiration and motivation and then I duly comment and favour it as it should be and honestly I think that I don’t get to see them all, some excellent work is actually lost, probably never to be seen or appreciated again.
As Ronnie says, this is not a rant. But hopefully these suggestions will make some sense to the 500px team who so far has done nothing but a brilliant job so far.
Hi David, Thanks for coming over to my formal blog and posting your thoughts on the 500px Community here. It seems from the two sites we have struck a nerve as several people have sent me tweets or personal message through the site to indicate they love the site, but feel like they are lost in the noise of the masses already present. Thanks again for sharing your thoughts and opinion.
It wasn’t as bad a while ago when there were less users uploading less pictures as it actually made sense to check out the fresh list. Now that there are so many “awesome” photographers sometimes uploading dozens of pictures at once, it became entirely pointless. Of course this makes it impossible to ever make it into the popular section if you don’t have a decent following. On the other hand, the ones who have their following get new stuff into popular within half an hour, increasing their following even more.
So what can you do? Blog post (which noone checks either), post comments and favorite others in the hope they check out your stuff. It is the same on flickr, though with different groups each photo has more shots at fame than the initial posting and 24 hours.
The only solution I see would be restricting uploads to like 1 per day for everyone. Then it would be possible to check out the fresh section again without running into 100 pictures from the same people and stuff would stay in front longer.
I am not quite sure what to think of the 1x model. I had pictures turned down there that had over 6000 views on flickr on one day (even without any nudity!). Guess they didn’t suck so bad after all…
This is not a rant by the way, I accepted it is the way it is and deal with it. For me, 500px is the best site right now, despite its flaws.
Hey Ronnie, Thanks a bunch for posting your 500px reply here. I really appreciate it. Seems this topic is getting some traction and several photographers have had or are having the same thoughts and feelings. I really do appreciate you adding your thoughts and perspective. – David
Lots of good thoughts have been shared already so I will try not to say them again.
I like the idea behind the Fresh and Upcoming categories however I think there could be some reworking to make them a little more effective. Currently those categories are focused on the images, which for a photography site is the obvious thing to do. I suggest moving the focus away from the images and more to the photographer. Or if you don’t want to change the current system just add a mirror for the photographer.
Fresh Photographers: New users, or people that haven’t really stated posting yet. User must have less than 50 images, less than 100 favorites, and less than 100 affection score.
Upcoming Photographers: People who have been on the site but maybe haven’t been noticed as much. User must have; less than 100 images, less than 250 favorites, and less than a 250 affection score.
I’m not quite sure where the numbers should be but you get the general idea.
I also think that the commenting system is broken. If you vote for something, regardless of if it’s positive or negative, you must leave a comment. If you favorite something, you must leave a comment. Nothing is worse than getting a vote and having no idea why something liked it. That doesn’t really seem to go along with what most of the mission statements of helping improve your photography. I personally am much more concerned with the comments I get than the votes. While I tend not to like sites that force me to do something I think some form of mandatory commenting would be nice.
I do agree that being able to post an unlimited amount of photos per day is a bad thing. Too much content is much worse than not enough. Sometimes it’s just too much to wade through. But finding the point at which you limit people is tricky, especially for people paying for Awesome accounts. While 1 photo a day would make people really think about what they post, why would anyone pay $50 for an Awesome account? I think it might hurt the business side too much.
But those are just my thoughts.
Hey Chris, Thanks so much for the comments. I think you have some great ideas here. I like the limits and levels you are suggesting. I am going to keep posting this link and see if we can get someone at 500px to take a look. It seems to me that all of the feedback and observations are designed to make the site better as opposed to highlighting issues or faults. Your limits are a definitely a step in the right direction and would improve a great many things. It is certainly no stretch to see new requirements for the sites community function falling out of these limits. Thanks again ! – David
You know what else would be a good experiment? Take the same image and post it as yourself and have someone with a 500px “name” post it as well. This would show if people like images based on the actual image or the photographer posting it.
Dave,
Thanks for taking the time to make this post… I’ve been scouring the web to see if anyone out there shared the same ideas about 500px as I do. ( I agree with everyone that’s commented thus far as well!)
Perhaps I’ve lost my mind, but I don’t think I’m that far gone yet – but since I’ve joined and browsed through hundreds of photos, I’m seeing a trend (visible on almost all photos / manipulations) where people comment and leave between 1 – 3 word answers. I know it’s by choice of the user how long their comments are, but I’d like to see a feature that encourages users to say a bit more / offer up critiques… I think doing this will drastically improve the quality of the community.
Take for instance DeviantArt (doesn’t matter whether you think it’s a quality community or not). Once a user clicks “Favorite,” they’ve got this nice little jQuery function that pops up a box asking for the user to leave feedback. Perhaps it might be something to consider for this site when a user clicks fav or like.
Would also be nice for users to approve / deny comments they’ve received. So for instance if I were to receive 30 comments on a photo (not that I’m anywhere near that popular!), I guarantee that a good portion of them would say things like “great!” “nice!” “like!” – I’m not trying to sound like a have an ego or anything, but simple comments like that are redundant since there is a like button. This would also save a notification burden on early commentors, since they’re automatically notified of everyone who comments after them.
Hey Jeff,
I’m glad you found a place to share some great ideas and thoughts on the 500px site. We have had some good discussion here and on the 500 site about this topic. The simple comments aren’t worth a ton. I have often found that people wont dispel with advice much on these sites. This is why I like 1x.com (OneExposure) as they are very critical as to what is included in the site and of the images themselves. That critical review is what makes that site great. I would like to see the votes and comments be tighter as well. You should check out my 500px blog post with regard to new features. I think I need to move it over here for better discussion.
Thanks for the note Jeff. I really do appreciate the feedback and thoughts.
-David
Actually sir, I had already posted that there, and copied it over for your site.
Hey Jeff,
Thanks for the note. I had gotten you confused with someone else. I do indeed see your post and appreciate you sharing your thoughts on the site. Thanks so much. Sorry for the confusion. – David
This post basically sums up what I’ve been thinking lately about 500px. When I joined the site in early August I was encouraged by the quality of photos here and the lure, mostly from the voting system, of more exposure here than on Flickr. Unfortunately it seems that it’s just another popularity contest which dooms my photos to being lost in the noise as you have said. I’ve had a few that have made it into the popular section, but the popular folks with their large following, sometimes irregardless of quality get their photos voted in quickly. Garnering them even more exposure. And the way ratings decay daily your photos don’t have long to live without large quantities of likes.
It’s a real catch-22 situation, you can’t get exposure without followers and you can’t get followers without exposure. Honestly, sometimes I think my photos would get as much exposure if I printed them out and hung them in the back of my closet. It can be rather demoralizing.