500px Partners With Visual China Group; Expands Into China With 500px.me

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Nov 13, 2015) - 500px, an online photography community for sharing, discovering and licensing amazing photos, today announces its expansion into China with the launch of 500px.me. Through a joint venture with Visual China Group (VCG), 500px.me is available to the almost half a billion Chinese Internet users. 500px.me is an online photography community targeted to users in China. The Web interface is available to consumers in China beginning today and an iOS application will follow in the coming days.

500px also announces that it has entered into a master delegate agreement with VCG whereas VCG will have exclusive rights to license a selection of 500px's marketplace images in China. VCG is an investor in 500px and China's largest online visual content platform, with over 15 years of experience in licensing photos and managing copyrights in the Chinese market.

"China presents a huge market opportunity for 500px for both growing our user base and licensing business," said Andy Yang, CEO of 500px. "VCG already has a tremendous footprint in China, with over 15,000 licensing customers and leads the market in image distribution. Together we are committed to investing in 500px.me to make it a world-class community for local photographers."

In addition to photos from Chinese users, 500px.me will also feature images from members of the greater 500px community who choose to participate. 500px currently has 6 million users globally. Images uploaded to 500px.me will automatically sync to 500px.com.

500px.me will be owned and operated through a joint venture between 500px and VCG.

About 500px
Launched in 2009, 500px is a global online photography community for sharing, discovering and licensing amazing photos. Images on 500px represent the work of over 6 million professional and hobbyist photographers. Through its marketplace, 500px works with thousands of agency and brand creatives who use 500px images in their campaigns.

500px is venture backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Visual China Group and ff Venture Capital and headquartered in Toronto, Canada with offices in San Francisco and New York City. For more information on 500px, go to www.500px.com.

About Visual China Group
(www.visualchina.com), founded in 2000, is China's biggest visual content and solution provider, listed in Shenzhen A share (SHSE: 000681) with a market capitalization of over $3 billion. VCG operates China's largest online visual content platform (www.vcg.com), with catalogues from over 240 institutional image partners and over 15,000 contracted photographers.

Visual China Group has over 100 million still images, 1 million pieces of stock footage, serving a diverse customer base of over 15,000 media companies, government organizations, corporate, advertising agencies and public relations companies in China. VCG is also the owner of the most popular online designers community (www.shijue.me) in China.

Based on trans-dimensional synergy among Internet, cultural creativeness and related industries, Visual China Group capitalizes on its core competence in visual business to extend its influence into tourism, education, entertainment, sports, etc.