I thought we have seen the last of these. Oh you know, with all the rage of web 2.0, 3.0, and all the slick design breakthrough happening everywhere. So it was a nice surprise when I came across one of these today. On a fairly popular site, nonetheless.

After enjoying a free three-month trial of Flickr Pro, my subscription was coming to an end. For a while I was intrigued to check out Flickr’s Stats page, but unfortunately that didn’t come with the free trial. After months-long deliberation of Flickr’s $25 vs 500px’s $50 annual subscription, I decided to go with Flickr since most of my photos and sets are on there anyway. The decision was also made easy especially considering I just spent some time integrating my Flickr gallery to my Photography page.

Anyhow, I finally purchased the annual subscription, rushed to the Stats page, and lo and behold.

The guy’s actually drilling something.

As of this writing (about 2 hours since I purchased subscription), I still see this page and its lovely under construction gif. Looks like I’ll need to wait another “few days” before I see something.

Comparing the Two? Why not.

Generally speaking though, Flickr.com needs a major redesign. Comparing this with 500px, the outdated design is certainly one of the major cons.

500px puts the only things that matter front-and-center: the photographs. No advertisements. No blog snippets. No marketing spiels. No clutter. Upon uploading a photo on 500px, it gets promoted and exposed enough to the community that you start getting votes/favorites/comments fairly quickly.

Speaking of uploading photos, you’ve got to love the little “Discoverability” meter that 500px recently added. It really makes you want to do the less glamorous process of adding metadata about your photos. Yay for gamification!

Discoverability Meter really makes you want to add metadata of your photos.

Maybe I’m not active enough on Flickr, but I find myself needing to promote my photos by adding it to random groups in order to get any exposure. I do like the nice, active community there though that I scan and peruse from time to time.

I guess it’s all about context of use. 500px has a lot to love and is about focusing on the few beautiful, portfolio-worthy money shots you’ve taken. Flickr is about uploading all those couple hundred photos from Weekend at Uncle Bob’s and sharing the album with your family and friends.

I should’ve gone with 500px. Oh well, there’s always next year.

How about you?

Which photo-sharing website do you prefer? Do you use a different one?

If you haven’t already, feel free to follow me on both 500px and Flickr.