Hello everyone,

My name is Tim and I'm a user experience researcher at 500px. We're currently looking gather data on image protection. One of our goals is to find a balance between viewing/browsing photos on 500px and protecting them from theft. If anyone is interested in participating in a 30 minute remote interview or email conversation, you can sign up here:

newbielink:https://survey777.typeform.com/to/N9fOae [nonactive]

As a thank you for your time, we're offering 3 months of Plus subscriptions (unlimited uploads on 500px) for anyone that we interview.

Thank you!

Pleased to see they are looking at this!

hello, i went to your site and was impressed with some of the work. also the price line for printed material which are not in line with the absurd low price of micro.

only concern is that , like fbook,flickr,etc... you look no diff to me as a social-media
rather than a site to be taken seriously for photographers wanting to market their work.

what i mean is as i mentioned before here on leaf's site, is that i notice most of your contributors tend to hinged on the idea of "like your work, come visit me and give me a thumbs up" or what fb calls "like", or that silly nudge, pinch or whatever.

you have to decide whether you want to be a social-media where your ppl join you to show off their snapshots, or you want to be taken seriously as a photographer's outlet.

and yes, of course, watermark is critierion too. i don't know what to advise you on this matter
as i am no expert on watermarks. perharps find a way to preserve camera's exif or what ever.
as if i understand correctly, in issues of copyright infringement we can prove we own the photos by providing our original as each frame is embedded with our camera id etc
something to consider.

btw, welcome and pls feel free to make more threads. and don't take too seriously the goofballs who thrive and driving away new sites trying to make an appearance here on leaf's forum.
they really have no actual damage to you, if you take those ppl like barking dogs

Tim, please make social media sharing optional.
I have no interest in seeing my photos shared freely on Facebook, Twitter, G+ etc.

I am not a facebook, flicker, istagram or twitter user.  I also prefer to keep my life and art off social media... 

Tim, please make social media sharing optional.
I have no interest in seeing my photos shared freely on Facebook, Twitter, G+ etc.

Yup... That's the point.

I uploaded many images wasting time on preparing two sizes and handly watermark on files (why the h... isn't it made automatically?!). Some promising sales showed up but... huge but... I wasted far too much time on removing my work from the sites I didn't want to share my work... taken from 500px. Like Thumblr for example. One guy takes (shares) the image from your site and hundreds people just copy it to their blogs. I don't use it and I don't want people to share my images without my permission here and there. And your politic is encouraging people to share just like that.

Last year I (and many other people) asked 500px to stop this madness and let us decide about sharing options. 500px declined saying:

"However, we allow and encourage members to share photos from 500px on personal blogs and social networks. As long as they're providing a link back to the photo's page and giving the photographer attribution for the photo,..."

and
"social sharing will always be a feature of 500px. It increases views of your photos and thereby increases sales..."

It was almost a year ago. (Big thread on the forum to read more.) I was removing my work almost everyday from different sites, sometimes hundreds weekly... without any link back to my PF or even not a word who created the image. I was very patient but finally had enough and deleted my images from 500px. You know, there is no other site that would let people share so wide in internet and I still have nice sales there, I mean they have clients who pay...

It is really good to know you open for people and try to listen about watermark. But you have more important and bigger problem, priority.

Many professionalists who want to sell images are not 14 y.o. children who love to spend life on collecting hearts, likes, favs or whatever. It's very nice when people enjoy my work but this is about business and licensing every usage, even in internet, on the blogs. Others may have different expectations. Here are mine - 500px is not ready for professionalists with what you offer now - changing watermark is only first step from your side.