Oleg's a nice guy.
I met him earlier this year. Was thinking about applying to 500px, but it can't compete with my current salary.
The problem with 500px, is like here or any website where people can affect movement, there are definitely certain styles which appeal to the masses. Over the top processed landscapes are a prime example at 500px.
I would be interested to see how they can implement an algorithm which subjectively goes through the cloud and chooses photos.
i like 500px simply becuase of the quality, i rarely come across crap. I use it too search for ideas and inspiration more than i care for the social bumping.
Flickr's strength is the forums. It's also useful for hosting images to use elsewhere. As a place to show off your best artistic photography, it has some value, but there's also a lot of crap there. Some of it is mine.
I may need to get active on 500px again, but only post my best.
Interesting article. I've never gotten into 500px. The few times I looked at the site the most popular images surprised me a little as better images seemed to be in the background there. Then I learned of people "gaming" their system and any appeal for the site on my part was instantly gone. If changes they are making can cut down on the system gaming I might start looking at it in the future, I really don't now. I guess I could use it for challenge ideas, but I prefer coming up with my own ideas spontaneously- that's part of the fun for me and when I do well it feels like more of an accomplishment.
As imperfect as it may be with just a handful of screeners with some biases, 1x is still the place I go to when I want to look at nice images. I feel the images that catch the buzz there are more likely to be good on their own merit rather than just getting noticed because their owner has played the back slapping popularity game.
