Social Media and Website Upgrades

This is actually a blog post I’ve been working on for some time. There are a lot of great websites that have been around for a while but there are newcomers that are positioning themselves off of the others flaws. I definitely suggest you all start checking out 500px and Google+ because the one thing they have in common and the advantage they have over their competitors (Flickr and Facebook) is a way better way to showcase your photos.

Flickr vs. 500px

For quite a while now I’ve been hearing a lot of complaining from the photography industry about Flickr. I don’t know how long ago it was designed but I do know that in the almost 3 years that I’ve been using it, I can’t think of any changes that have been made. But, that should come as no surprise because Yahoo! (who owns Flickr) looks the exact same way it did like 10 years ago…

One of the biggest complaints (besides the horrible design) is the fact that it’s become a huge dumping site. I never understood the people who had 10,000 photos in their Flickr account… It makes no sense at all. I think a lot of these things have just been bringing the site down. I don’t know about others but based on my statistics I’ve seen a pretty steady decrease and I think it’s based on the fact that Flickr is just old and no longer innovative.

Welcome the new kid on the block, 500px. I was of course a little skeptical about getting into another photo sharing website. I was at the point where I was fed up with Flickr and really felt like I didn’t have much use for sharing photos (and honestly I still don’t think I’m that interested). But, after sending a tweet out wondering about 500px (and having them retweet it) I was bombarded with tons and tons of tweets about how great it was. I looked into it and found that the way photos are displayed are a million times better than Flickr.

500px is definitely an inspiring place to go check out photos. It’s been a while since I’ve explored through the many photos but I did find it hard to find some decent sports photos. It definitely seems more like a great place to display your landscape photographs but it shouldn’t hold you back from signing up. It’s free so how bad could it be?

The one thing I love about 500px is the fact that it doesn’t seem like I have to write something to go along with my photo. On Flickr, I always felt like I was responsible to write some sort of story behind each photo and the more and more I did that, the more annoying it got. There’s a reason why I was a math major in college and that was to avoid writing papers at all costs!

Here’s a little comparison between the two layouts.

Facebook vs Google+

Yes, I’m going to go there. For a long time I’ve been super annoyed with Facebook. It’s one of those things that everybody is on so it’s a great way to stay in touch with everyone you know. But, as my interest waned I stopped interacting with others and now it’s at a point where the only person who ever comments on any of my posts is my mom (Yeah, I’m that loser!).

Google, being the powerhouse that it is, tried again to get in on the social media game and I think they got it right. At the moment, not a ton of my friends are on there but it seems like there’s a great photography community. I’m still getting the hang of it and getting used to yet another social media outlet. I’m still trying to streamline things like I have over on the Facebook fan page to automatically comment when I’ve created a new blog post (Maybe someone can give me some advice on how to do that with Google+).

Facebook has started to make some changed to be more like G+ but I think they are still missing out on the photo sharing. I know myself and many other photographers have been annoyed with the quality of images posted to Facebook. They go through (or at least they used to) some sort of compression that was always degrading the quality and the colors. Google+ on the other hand, has the best image showcase of any social media or photo sharing website that I’ve seen. Some of those recent updates to Facebook include the ability to show larger photos but I still don’t think it’s the same. Google+ blacks everything out and really sets the image on the own whereas Facebook just kinda fades out the stuff in the background and opens a little box. The other things I love about Google+ is how you can cycle through photos using the wheel on your mouse and the comments set off to the side.

Like I said, I’m still trying to get the hang of Google+ and build a community over there. At the moment I have around 80 followers so I don’t see too much commenting or traffic besides some of my close friends (hint hint: come check it out and contribute!). But, I totally see it as another great way for photographers to share their work and try to connect with more and more people.

Here’s a side by side of Facebook and Google+:

If you are a photographer and not using Google+ or 500px, I highly recommend you at least try them out. They are both great programs and I think huge upgrades from their competitors, Facebook and Flickr. And while I am at it, I’ll throw in my information so you can follow me on any of the above websites:

Zach Ancell Flickr Photostream, Zach Ancell Photography Fan Page, Zach Ancell on 500px, and Zach Ancell’s Google+. I look forward to seeing all of you there!

This entry was posted on Monday, October 10th, 2011 at 8:23 AM. It is filed under Blog and tagged with 500px, Facebook, Flickr, Google+, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.