500px teams up with Microsoft to showcase curated photos from its community on Bing’s homepage

Photo-sharing service 500px today announced a partnership with Microsoft that will help photographers in its community gain even more exposure. Their work will have the chance to be showcased on Bing’s homepage as featured images.

The photos that get picked will include the photographer’s biography and details about the image, including where it was taken and what it represents. How exactly 500px will do the choosing, however, is unclear.

Oleg Gutsol, founder and CEO of 500px, insists that this move is all about the photographers:

Our editors will comb through the best of the best images on 500px and our top picks will be featured on Bing’s homepage. Our photographers are among the best visual storytellers in the world. This is a major opportunity for them and one of many more to come. By collaborating with a company like Microsoft, we’re introducing our community and their work to a wider global audience. Our collaboration with Bing puts our photographers front and center on one of the world’s most visited sites.

It’s not difficult to see how the move increases exposure for 500px overall, and that can’t hurt. Gutsol did also say, however, that his company is “exploring other avenues” to showcase photographers on the site.

Here is today’s Bing homepage with a 500px background:

As for Microsoft, the benefit is also quite obvious. One of the unique features Bing offered at launch was a homepage with a large background image, which also doubled as a jumping point to various queries.

Finding a new image every day must take a lot of effort, as well as expensive when you factor in getting the rights to feature it (Microsoft usually uses Getty Images). In this way, the company is effectively outsourcing some of the work while still ensuring the quality of the content.

Yet the background image isn’t where this deal ends. The two companies say they will be working together to “surface more striking 500px content and integrate 500px photographers’ work into selected parts of the Bing.com experience” over the next few months. We’ll keep you posted as this partnership grows.

Top Image Credit: Miguel Saavedra