Breakdown of 500px’s photo tagging flow
When I uploaded my photos for the first time to 500px I was blown away by how they handled tagging. I’ve also uploaded things to YouTube and it was no where near as encouraging as 500px. Discovering photos is the crux of any photo sharing service, and probably more important than you think. The team at 500px did a wonderful job making the experience a lot less painful than it looks.
After uploading my first photo, I was presented with a ton of form fields. This is just for one photo too, imagine having to do it for more. Every photo needs a title, so that is where I began since it’s the simplest way I can quickly describe the photo. Maybe I could even just save and be done with it after that.
The moment I started typing in the title field, discoverability came to life. It gracefully slid right and revealed this yellow bar usually reserved for alerts/caution. That little moment of delight encouraged me to push a little further, just a little more meta data, just to see what it does.
Here I added a very basic description and the actual location of where the photo was taken, which was very easy to add with the embedded Google maps widget. My discoverability skyrocketed! By switching the color to green I assumed I was good to go, perhaps I could move the bar a little more and have an even better chance of getting discovered. At this point I didn’t know how the photo would be discovered but I knew this would give me the best chances, and that’s all that mattered.
After adding a tag and category, my photo felt like it was ready to go. There is a store and a “pulse” on 500px that helps your photo become even more discoverable. I kept that in mind as I improved my discoverability score.
Whenever we create content we usually want others to see it. 500px did a good job making you feel like it was going to be seen somehow. They made something that feels laborious feel enjoyable and potentially fruitful with each piece of meta data that was added.
