500px
 |
|
| Type of business | Private |
|---|---|
|
Type of site
|
Social Networking |
| Headquarters |
22 Duncan St. Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
| Area served | Worldwide |
| Founder(s) | Oleg Gutsol Evgeny Tchebotarev |
| CEO | Andy Yang |
| Key people | Oleg Gutsol, Founding CEO Evgeny Tchebotarev, Co-founder |
| Employees | Over 100 |
| Website | 500px.com |
| Alexa rank |
 1,324 (October 2016[update]) |
| Launched | October 31, 2009 |
| Current status | Active |
500px (pronounced "five hundred px") is a Canadian online community and marketplace based on photography, co-founded by Oleg Gutsol and Evgeny Tchebotarev (artistically also known as “Ian Sobolev”) on Halloween 2009. The Toronto-based startup launched its Web 2.0 version in 2009 and is aimed at aspiring and professional photographers; encouraging members to upload their best work. In August 2015, the company launched a new version of its iOS app.
500px is seen as a place to gain exposure, find inspiration and connect photographers with one another. As of January 2016[update], the site had 7 million users.
Evgeny Tchebotarev began 500px in 2003 within the social blogging website LiveJournal, working on it as a hobby whilst he completed a business degree at Ryerson University. Back then, 500px was considered a good size for web display and was therefore the limit placed on photos submitted to the community for review. Once photographers submitted their photos they were moderated and only those of a high quality would make it past the community’s curators and be published onto the site.
Tchebotarev joined forces with Oleg Gutsol and in early 2009 they began work on the mostly automated incarnation of 500px. Image size grew to 900 pixels but the name remained. The two relaunched the site on October 31, 2009. In February 2012 the site got another update with features called "flow", "stories", and "market".
In 2009, the site had 1000 users, purely through word of mouth. By late November 2012, the site had more than 1,500,000 users.
500px ISO blog was named one of the best blogs of 2012, by Time magazine.
In July 2015, the company raised $13 million in Series B funding led by a strategic investor, the Visual China Group, and included participation from existing backers of the company.
In September 2015, Google announced that 500px is one of the first external Chromecast photography partners. It will allow more than 20 million Chromecast users to view and display a curated collection of 500px photos on their HD TVs. They can discover the photographers who took them via the attribution links.
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Wikipedia