In today’s USA Today was a story which was posted online as “Facebook’s ‘tagging’ option is a big hit with photo sharing” … but I preferred the print headline:
At Facebook… 1 second = 750 photographs
By whatever metric you want to use and whatever headline you like, the number is rather staggering. Consider the larger numbers mentioned in the article:
Some 2 billion photos a month — or nearly 70 million a day — are uploaded to Facebook. By comparison, Yahoo’s popular photo site Flickr gets 3 million uploads a day.
Two billion photos a month. Given Facebook’s recent news of crossing over 300 million users, that’s roughly 7 photos per month from each user. Considering that many of those 300 million users are “casual” users who may only login occasionally – and in some cases very occasionally, it’s probably much more likely that a smaller core of people are uploading larger numbers of photos. Again, however you measure, it’s an amazing number of photos.
The USA Today article talks about the “tagging” capability within Facebook as driving this growth in photo uploads. That may well be a contributing factor, but for me a large part of why I’ve uploaded photos to Facebook is:
Simplicity
It’s incredibly easy to upload images into Facebook, either through the website or through mobile apps like the iPhone app. Right at the top of your Facebook login screen is this:
Right in my iPhone app is the ability to take a photo and instantly upload it. I’ve used this on a personal level to upload various photos I’ve taken directly into my Facebook account. On a business level, I used this a great deal at a recent trade show and uploaded the photos directly to Voxeo’s Facebook Page. It’s simple and easy. It’s also incredibly easy to organize the pictures once they are up in Facebook.
It’s also easy to upload pictures and organize them in Flickr, too, but I do admit that I’ve found myself doing that less and uploading to Facebook more. A large part of that is the new Facebook app on the iPhone which is a great all around app. (And no, I haven’t tried out the new Flickr app yet.) I do admit, though, that there is an element of truth to the USA Today piece… part of the allure of uploading to Facebook is the social element and how others can easily see and comment on your photos.
Again, though, amazing stats in terms of numbers of uploads…
Dan:
Impressive stats, Dan!
I’ve also been uploading photos to Facebook with increasing regularly. Most of them, too, are right from my mobile phone, or through the Facebook iPone app (you’re right: It really is outstanding!) or through the unique e-mail address that Facebook provides to me.
Flickr is a more important platform for posting images that I think I’ll want to retrieve later (yes, you can do that in Facebook, too, but it feels clunkier to me and without unique URLs); Facebook is much more about the instant socialization.