@thogenhaven Hi Thomas! Right now, Bee is about connecting you to your favorite brands. You are not paid in this version, because you are not selling anything. You retain all rights, and in return for limited brand use, companies multiply your exposure. If you are looking to get paid, lookout for future versions where you will be paid royalties for Bee photo shoots. However, we envision Bee as an alternative to being underpaid for your photos. With Bee, you have the option of making money or keeping complete ownership, getting the exposure needed to make top dollar. Hope this helps!

@lukas_huberman there is an unfortunate trend where big companies earn a lot compared to workers. Launching without paying photographers is a step down this wrong direction, IMO.

@thogenhaven @lukas_huberman Hi Thomas, we are sorry you feel that way. However, Bee is not about exploiting anyone, but about giving people a medium by which to display their work. If we paid photographers we would have to follow the unfortunate trend set by the big corporations. We would need to take the rights to their photos and pay them small cash amounts just to compete. We don't believe that is right, and so we simply facilitate interaction while letting the artists retain ownership of their content. We envision Bee as a way to create a better dialogue between fans and brands :)

@andrew_ullmann no you wouldn't. It's called licensing. Let the photographers license their work. I like your platform and for newbies it's great, but exposure doesn't pay rent.

@delwilliams Hi Del, the option to have your favorite brands serve as your PR team may be better for "newbies" as you say, but we like to think all photographers could use a couple million eyes on their work. However, there is no doubt that exposure doesn't pay rent, and we also have a paid licensing option. Unfortunately, we could not do both, and if you want to be paid for your content, the companies are not obligated to give you credit. If you want to hear more about our rights-managed licensing to companies let me know!

@may_or_maynot Thanks Joseph! We want to have the best possible user experience for encouraging dialogue on our platform. We’re totally thinking about feeds & following; our goal is to create a place where creators can really connect with their favorite brands. P.S. Thanks for post #burritoart :)

@jjstidd Hello Jonathan, You bring up a great point with introducing this on iOS. It is indeed our plan to quickly release an app that allows for posting and also up-voting. Do you have any other suggestions for features you would want on that native app?

@lukas_huberman Nice! any desire to also connect it to instagram? Perhaps you could scrape instagram content using a particular hashtag (e.g. #🐝) or allow users to also post to instagram within your app as part of the post-submission process. Just spit ballin'

@dredurr Hi Deandre! We are working on adding more documentation. In the meantime, this is how the entire process works. 1) You post your photos to the brand page. 2) People upvote it to allow the best photos to rise to the top. 3) You are probably an amazing photographer, so a brand selects your photo. 4) You are instantly notified that your photo has been selected, and a "chosen by [brand name]" tag will appear next to your name so you get public credit. 5) The brand now shows your photo to the world through a rights-managed license, giving you photo credit on every social media platform (unless you accept their $20 payment to opt out). 6) You retain complete ownership and rights to your photo, and can now sell it at top dollar thanks to the publicity.

@aramiggs Hello Aram! What questions do you have?

@codylewis Hi Cody! We are glad you like Bee, and are happy you share our vision for young photographers and the future of freelance photography. We hope to see you and many other people making a name for themselves on Bee. As far as your questions: We are currently working with our registered brands to encourage as many downloads and branded postings as possible. We cannot speak for how actively our brands are watching (because of privacy issues), but as we continue to gain more content, we have gotten more requests from brands to join the platform and more "featured photos". We still have a long way to go before people look to us first for branded photos, but we hope to get there as fast as possible. We currently do not have integration with Instagram at the moment, because we are solely web based. Instagram doesn't allow you to post from the web, but we are looking into it as we considering developing a Bee application

@kbclauson Thanks Kaben! We are really glad you like it. We are hoping to give people a better way to interact with their brands, and hope to see your photos getting featured sometime soon!

@wanderwomans Thank you so much Sakhita, it's been an awesome first day! We hope you enjoy sharing photos with your favorite brands!

@erickbarron86 Hi Erick! We are aware of the need for some more documentation, and are working on it. We also appreciate the confidence in our concept. 1) We are looking to expand the list of available companies for posting. Currently, we only have the 200+ registered companies and a couple dozen companies on a trial basis. 2) We agree with the registration being too long, but unfortunately we need to include date of birth for legal reasons. The Instagram handle is not currently required, it just helps us give the people who post the credit they deserve. 3) We are working on this and our CPO will comment on this momentarily. 4) We want people to feel free to post all their content. We see Bee as a way to foster interaction between companies and fans, and encouraging one post a day will likely select out the genuine moments that make these brands unique. 5) We are hoping that upvotes will sort the photos by quality to avoid the spammy feeling mentioned in 4. This will allows people to post more often, without tarnishing our platform. I hope this helps, and we truly appreciate your 2 cents!

@erickbarron86 Hey Erick, thanks for noticing that. I'm going to whip up a quick fix right now and get that looking better. Thanks for bringing it to my attention!

@samir_doshi Thanks for the suggestion! I'm very excited to see how their technology develops especially with the recent acquisition from Spotify.

@erik_byargeon Thanks Erik, I like your platform, think it's a great idea. Brand always want to content farm from the crowd as its such a rewarding win win and empowers fans. Great stuff... any competitors in the space?

@samir_doshi Right now, we are targeting a very niche space, and have little competition. As we grow, we hope to create a place where fans and brands can truly interact (news, comments, content, etc.) At that point, we will run into competition from some small, local companies: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram... Hopefully, Product Hunt will get the word out about us by then ;)