Flickr power users prefer Toronto’s 500px
Toronto photo-sharing startup 500px got written up by GigaOm’s Colleen Taylor yesterday and the post includes some impressive numbers.
According to Taylor’s article 500px has become the new favorite site of a lot of Flickr power users with some 27,000 of the site’s 67,000 current members joining in the past two months.
500px charges $50 per year for premium accounts that allow users to create unbranded portfolio websites. For those wishing to sell photos online, 500px collects a 5% commission on all printing sales.
500px was founded by Oleg Gutsol and Ian Sobolev eight years ago as a community for photography buffs within the LiveJournal blogging platform. The bootstrapped company currently has just four full-time employees.
According to the founders growth has come purely through word of mouth. That may change soon though with an pending investment – the company is in the process of raising an undisclosed amount of venture funding from a group of New York-based investors.
Techvibes has been tracking 500px on our Toronto Startup Index for months and today they are #3 on the May 2011 Index. With over 70,000 visitors per day so far in May, look for 500px to take over the #1 spot soon.
