22 Oct 2015 500px Relaunches Beta for Chinese Site After Contributor Protest

500px has today announced the relaunching in beta of their Chinese mirror site 500px.me.

The new beta comes after the very negative feedback received from their contributors that lead the company to shut down the site the day after it first launched.

The New Beta

After the community reaction became clear, 500px began sending personalised apology emails to some star contributors, which only added fuel to the fire as the majority of community members felt left out.  Later on they issued a public apology to all members and took the 500px.me website offline.

The relaunched site today no longer includes all content from 500px.  It now only contains the content of the member who specifically signed up on the 500px.me website.  The company plans to add a selection of top photographers to the site shortly.

The announcement includes details of Visual China Group’s credentials for asserting copyright infringement enforcement in China, even citing their $3 Billion valuation.  This is intended to calm member concerns over how images will be treated in the region.

Critically, an opt-out will be provided on the main 500px website for members to exclude their images from the mirror site. They’re also looking closer at the watermark to better protect images. These changes will arrive when the site comes out of beta in mid November.