Our team, and the team at Visual China Group, have been working around the clock since we put the 500px.me website on hold a few days ago to address our community’s concerns and come up with a beta launch plan that you can get as excited about as we are. Today, we’re announcing that plan!

The 500px.me beta will relaunch today, Thursday, October 22nd. at Noon Eastern Time. It will go live featuring ONLY those users’ profiles who signed up on 500px.me directly.

The next step will be to add a select group of top 500px.com photographers who have asked to join our beta test of the localized site as we work to make it a place you will be proud of, and where you’ll be excited to share your work.

Visual China Group, our partner in 500px.me, is a listed company in the Chinese stock market with a market cap of over $3 billion as of Oct 21, 2015. As the leading investor of 500px’s Series B financing, VCG’s interests are totally aligned with 500px’s across the board, and they are committed to investing in the 500px.me user base to make it a world-class community for local users.

VCG also has over 15 years of copyright protection and enforcement experience in the photography market; while we are their first photo community partner, they work with over 240 reputable image and content partners globally. You can rest assured they are dedicated to protecting your photos.

We’ve moved to a progressive rollout plan because both we and VCG completely care about your concerns: appropriate controls were not in place for a full scale rollout when the site went live last week. We’re working around the clock to make sure that the most pressing requests like an opt-out checkbox on your 500px.com account, photo syncing between 500px.com and 500px.me, and appropriate security measures have been thoroughly tested before the rest of our community gets to participate and share their work in China. We expect to officially launch 500px.me in mid-November.

We are both dedicated to providing only the highest quality 500px experience possible to our community no matter what country your photos are being viewed in, and this next month of beta testing will allow us to release 500px.me as the exciting opportunity it was always meant to be—1.3 billion potential new eyes on your photography and the vision of a truly global community realized.

If you have any questions at all about 500px.me, the beta period, or anything else about 500px’s expansion in China, please feel free to read our comprehensive FAQ or email us at 500px.me@500px.com. We are committed to being as transparent as possible during the rest of this process, and making sure each of your voices are heard.

Thank you all for your passionate feedback and dedication to keeping 500px the best photo community in the world!