About a two years ago Ryan Cash wrote this, in response to my post on the matter:
But after Ben posted the intimate photos of his super-cute new daughter, they ended up populating an entire page or two of the feed of the people I follow.
I mean this in the most respectful way possible – but that’s not what > I wanted to see when I went to check the feed of the extremely talented photographers I’ve chosen to follow.
On Flickr or even Facebook, I’ve come to expect this sort of thing in the “recent activity” section of my contacts – but not on 500px.
I don’t want to unfollow Ben as I am interested in his other types of photography, but at the same time I don’t really want to see his personal photos all the time.
His thoughts came at a time when everyone thought Flickr was soon to die. Since then it has been reignited, but still kind of a dead community. Ryan is/was right, my photos were overboard.
It was actually an issue with the 500px plugin whereby new photos added to any collection was also added to my profile, and therefore in “feeds”. Now the Lightroom plugin doesn’t do that (which is great), but Ryan is still right.
500px was always a stop gap while Flickr tried to do anything but that hasn’t really changed. I am faced with two photo sharing sites, one that is great in 500px, and one that is something in Flickr.
The fact is, neither works for the primary purpose of sharing family photos with friends, Facebook probably does, but not these sites made specifically for photos.
I’ve kept sharing photos in collections on 500px for my family, but we need something better. I’ve not seen anything better, even the Kidpost project seems to miss the point.
All I want, all any parents wants, is an easy way to share great photos with family and only family. The best I have found is shared Photo Streams, but those are impossible to add photos to from my good cameras.
Apps like Sunlit get close, but they still aren’t ‘there’. It’d be great for there to be a section of 500px that still looks great, but only designated family members can access. I don’t need passwords, just a hidden, yet accessible, area for grandparents and the like.