A Tale of Two...

Photo hosting sites.
Namely Flickr and 500px.
Why I use two, I dunno but I'm not the only one as I see some folks on both.
I knew there was a difference right away as I only used Flickr as a hosting site to post up photos to forums and such, and 500px to post up the 'real' stuff.
More on this later.
They are different in the way you post your images up; with Flickr it goes into your photo stream and you decide which group you want to add it to, as many groups as you wish.
With 500px again it goes into your photo stream but you only get choose one category in which to submit.
I think.
To be honest, I'm sure I really know how 500px works, I just sort of go with the flow no pun intended.
You have to be there to understand that one.
I post up about two pics on Flickr for every one pic on 500px mainly because 500px seems like the more 'serious' place, a place where if it ain't great don't bother.
500px for your best work and Flickr for everything else.
I've been using both sites for oh about a year or so and I've found some interesting differences.

I don't show you, the reader, all my photos as I save some stuff for these two sites.
If I do post up an image here it's usually a bit different from the one that goes to the other places.
Of the images that do go to the other places, certain ones go to both, like the one above.
Simple rope barrier thingy across the street from the slush place.
You know, the magic elixir.
Anyways, I don't feel comfortable using the word artist to describe what I do for I'm not a photo major but as an artist you make stuff and your work isn't really validated until you hear from your peers.
With Flickr, you got a 'favorites' button, with 500px you got both a 'like' and a 'favorites' thingy, each giving your image a 'score.'
In any case there seems to a rather large discrepancy between the 'likes' of each service.
The photo above got 44 combined likes and favorites on 500px while garnering only 2 likes on Flickr.

That one got 1 like one Flickr while garnering 19 on 500px.
See the trend?
How about something odd, which I like to do.
Take pictures of odd things I mean:

That one got a whopping 14 likes on Flickr!
Wooohooo!
Wait!
On 500px, 43!
Hmmm...
Okay, a lot of it is determined by who sees your picture.
Here's where it gets really strange.
I got like three times as many 'followers' on Flickr than I do on 500px.
Yet on 500px, I get more votes!
Some might have to do with the demographic that views the images, but I don't hang out in the hoity toity over saturated mondo photoshopped image categories.
I post up in the film and street groups where the images are for the most part the same.
What I mean is you got your good and you got your bad.

There are also occasions where the trend runs the other way.
On Flickr 11 folks liked that one while on 500px I got only 8.
Okay, that was pretty close and the opposite trend of more votes on Flickr is unusual.
Last one, the image I used for the light meter thingy:

To be honest I'm not really happy with that one.
Any guesses?
19 Flickr.
37 500px.
Part of me wants to think that the folks on 500px are seeing the same thing I'm seeing but that would be some what self satisfying.
I seem to distribute my 'likes' equally on both sites, not favoring one over the other, so I think the work is pretty equal.
I'm feeling a bit paranoid over the difference mostly because of the difference in followers.
On the other hand I really don't care and it's become mostly a scientific experiment of sorts for me to try and figure out why.
I should be happy about all this because 500px seems like the more PRO site and Flickr is more the well, blue collar place where you got pros, wannabe pros and folks who like to take pictures.
Like me.
A folk that likes to take pictures.
Okay I do have a degree in art and I suppose my eyeballs are a bit more trained but does that account for the rather large difference?
I mean if it looks good it looks good right?
It could be that on 500px my pictures are so bad I'm getting like mercy/pity votes and the more realistic measure of my lack of skills are the meager votes I get on Flickr.
I'm confused.
I mean the aesthetic palates of each site can't be that different.
Right?
Time for me to experiment.
More on this later.