A review of the website 100ASA.com.

Well one day, while i was on Youpic.com a message came into my YouPic inbox. If i wanted to join 100ASA.com, because my photos where so great 😊 Now, when you read such a message and one website uses the tools from another website to gain new souls that says something about that website (and the people behind it). 😊 But hey, like sex,  i’m open for new stuff ! So i ‘fell’ for the trap and signed up with 100ASA.com.

Trouble.

And then the trouble begun. How to upload a photo. Curation, your Profile, etc. It is all bounded and limited. You HAVE TO BE a PAYING member to change your banner on your profile for example. Really ? Wow. So after finishing the profile, time to upload a photo. And that is where the real trouble starts. You see, you have to curate at least 10 photos of others to upload 1 of your own. Each curation gives you 2 ‘tokens’ and you need at least 20 tokens to upload 1 of your own photos. When i started, and when you want to upload a second photo, you had to have 24 tokens. (so you had to curate at least 12 more photos). Now they brought that back to 20 because the probably did get enough uploads ! And also here, as a non-paying member you are very limited in what you can do.

Community.

100ASA.com is probably Italian originated because there where/are a tremendous amount of Italian photographers on it. Also it is very European orientated in comparison with 500PX and YouPic. Then, what most photographers want, the exposure of your work. And here it gets really tricky. 100ASA is a website that ‘CURATES’ photos. Well, actually,  the ‘COMMUNITY’ curates photos. Like they tell you. They have too, otherwise that community cannot upload photos. And that ‘community’ has a style on its own. Like 500PX they  have a ranking system. Opening, Upcoming, Prime and Elite. If you are a non-paying member your photos will almost never get into the Elite Gallery. I have followed it for a month or 2 and almost all the published photos are from paying members.

Style.

Most Elite photos are, lets say, ‘Arty’ photos. I have seen a great deal of some very good photos that never made it further than the ‘opening’ gallery. And that is where it all sucks for me. The curation system and ‘the community’ that is being used by 100ASA sucks big time. Period. It’s to much limited by the ‘style’ of the curating ‘community’.

If your photo is not in a certain style, artiness, etc. no matter how great and technically good your photo is, your photo will never ever make it to the top (Elite) Gallery. Now, to be fair to 100ASA, since today (13-10-21), they offer a re-upload of your photo and offer it for a second curation 😊 how nice, how thoughtful…. looks more like a desperate measure to get more uploads.

Leaderboard.

I have followed the leaderboard list. And if you look at the ‘most published’ photographers list, it is more or less the same for the 2,5 months that i followed it. And will be the same for the next coming months. Same for the most ‘active users’. The incrowd !  Actually you can be a ‘Guru’ or a ‘Grandmaster’ in title (they call it ‘reputation’) while having no photo in your profile. Really ! The only thing you need to do is to curate a lot of photos. Because it gets you ‘Tokens’ and therefore, reputation. And a title ! Wow ! I wanna be a fuckin’ Grandmaster ! No ! I wanna be an ‘Artist’! Fuck Yeah !

Functionality.

Then there is the website functionality. It sucks. Really. The site is slow. Compared to Youpic and 500PX the site really lags. Also with the curation, it lags. Then there is the UI. The UI ? Yes, the User Interface. Ahah!, that one sucks too. Example: You see, you cannot see the photos from the people who you follow. Unless you go to your own profile, click ‘followers’, then go 1 by 1 to their profile and see if the have uploaded something new. In your Feed you get stuff like photos that you liked and curated and that’s it.

Tokens.

Going back to the tokens. So like i said you have to curate a photo in order to receive a token. But… these tokens have a life time. As i found out, mine run from Sunday to Sunday for a week. So if you curate and you have say 14 tokens in a week, you need 6 more to publish one photo. So what happens if you don’t see a photo to curate ? Or you cannot curate ? You loose your tokens and you have to start over again.

Youpic has limited the upload to 1 per day (for the free account), 500PX is 5 per week or something (free account), and these systems are far more friendly and keep the user at the site. Also the diversity of the galleries and, let’s say, the ‘top photos’ are far more diverse than on 100ASA (and 1x.com).

For Who ?

To me 100ASA.com, like 1X.com (which changed to the same set up), is, in my opinion, a site for a niche public/photographers, while Youpic and 500PX are more for the mainstream public but offer also place for the niche. Following photographers and see their work/what they do, stories, etc. is far more easy than on 100ASA. If you in it for the exposure and reach of your work, Youpic.com and 500PX.com are the better choices in my opinion. Especially when you take their paid platforms. I have been a PRO member on YouPic and i was really satisfied with it. Galleries, stories, website, etc. 500PX i still need to try. They are more expensive but when you use one of their offers and really exploit it until the very last drop, you get quite a lot out of it. (is my experience). Far more than you get with the paid options from 100ASA.com which have changed in the laste couple of months also. (since i have signed up).

Dislikes.

What i also don’t like about 100ASA is that i see photos that i have never seen into curation. I have followed the curation part for 2 months. Daily. I see photos been published in one of the ranking galleries, that i have never seen in curation. Another thing: the categories. Actually, the only category that hold the most photos is the Landscape Category. With only 13 photos (at the time of writing this article, being 15-10-21) in the Travel section you can say that that is a poor performance. Night have 5, Food have 3 and so on… But when you see the published ranking galleries it appears that there are a lot more photos. I wonder where they come from.

Likes.

I have nothing to like on 100ASA.com. Really.

Final.

Can i recommend 100ASA.com ? No. Why ? Read above 😊 100ASA.com seems to me a project that is born out of a frustration with other sites like 500PX, SmugMug, YouPic, etc. but is executed poorly. The UI, the site speed, the paid offers, the amount of photos for upload, the curation quality, the curation itself, user functionality, it all need to develop more and better. I wrote an article on Youpic.com about judging photos. 100ASA looks like the child of a frustrated photographer who’s photos didn’t get the recognition it thought it deserved and started for itself. There is some respect to give for that, but still the complete site is poorly executed.

Update.

After i posted this article i got contacted by someone of 100ASA.com. Again the contact went by the messenger function of YouPic.com (😊) which makes you think if they have really read the article and actually understood it. According to that person i was lying about everything i have mention in the article and i could not compare YouPic.com with 100ASA.com, with 1X.com i could (😊). Now, anyone who have been on 100asa knows that what i wrote is true, the screenshots come from my own account on 100asa. And the things that i wrote are actually my own experiences. Also i got quite some reactions from other photographers on 100asa, saying that they feel the same. And they are all on the free account.

The problem with sites who use a curation community or curators, is that the personal style, desires, wishes, preferences, etc. are taking over in the, what should be neutral, curation process. Like i wrote before: there are plenty of well taken photos, that never made it to the Prime or Elite Gallery. So the curation community didn’t see them as ‘good enough’.

Then there are the (pro) photographers on 100asa. Some of them, Pro account holders.  Sure i had some really nice comments on my photos, but also so very annoying ones. I can stand critics, if correct and useful, but burning down a photo because it is not your style nor preference is not done. And so i have met a few of those on 100asa. I have met more useless negativity in less than half a year, than on any other site. Some people in that curation community see themselves as self proclaimed photo pro’s that hold all the photographic knowledge and they only know what is best.  If one’s style is not yours, or you don’t like it, look elsewhere. The thing is that most of them are also on 500PX and Youpic. 😊 Makes you think how serious they take themselves and how serious you should take them.

Update 17-3-2022

A few weeks ago i re-visted 100ASA.com and i saw the site made some major updates. It even made me post 2 photos 🙂  And to be fair: Site speed improved, UI (User Interface) improved, actually overall site usability greatly improved. Still there are flaws and mostly in the curation part that i mentioned before in my critics. Again i got contacted by 100ASA people, or people claimed to be from 100ASA, again using the messenger function of YouPic.com, if i knew about 100ASA and that it is such a great site. This was the message: Have you heard about 100asa.com ? A new photo sharing platform that fights against oversharing, bad quality and favor ism (I like you , you like me) ” . Now, if you want to be a serious photographer site, stop doing this. Really. It is far from professional. Also if YouPic.com or any other site is not your cup of tea, look elsewhere. And the funny thing is that it is only directed at YouPic and not to other sites like 500PX, 1X, etc. Advice: keep your frustration in the pocket, and move on. And a tip for the curation community: I wrote and article about judging photos, maybe that can be of help when curating photos 🙂 Good luck 100ASA and keep that site developing !