Facebook might not be a photo-sharing site, per se, but there are a heck of a lot of pictures uploaded to it.
On Tuesday night, engineer Doug Beaver wrote a blog post announcing that the total count of photos on the site now stands at about 10 billion. The social network announced informally in August that it has hit 100 million active users worldwide.
To compare, the News Corp.-owned Photobucket, which has a real-time ticker of photos uploaded, stood at slightly less than 6.2 billion photos on Wednesday morning. Flickr, which is owned by Yahoo, hit 2 billion photos just less than a year ago.
"To celebrate (the photo-hosting milestone), we got a bunch of cupcakes and handed them out to our engineering and operations groups," the post read. "One of our engineers calculated that if we had gotten one cupcake for each of our photos, and lined them up side by side, the line could reach halfway to the moon."
Facebook's popularity may indeed reach the moon, but the news is a bit troubling too. Beaver noted that Facebook stores four sizes of each image, meaning that it has more than 40 billion images stored on its servers. That's a lot of storage space required, and though it's much cheaper than it used to be, hardware simply isn't free.
Facebook reportedly borrowed $100 million in May to cover server costs, and while the company is still pretty much swimming in venture capital, it's not clear that revenues will be up to par with server demands any time soon. Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said last week that the company hopes to be profitable in three years.
Discount retailer Target has signed a deal with photo-sharing service Photobucket, adding it to the small collection of online partners for its in-store photo-printing service.
Through the partnership, members of Photobucket can directly order photos for pickup at most Target stores (presumably any Targets that don't have photo-printing stations would be the exception). Typically, the photos will be ready within an hour.
Photobucket, a unit of News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Media, is the third current partner for the retailer; Target already has partnerships in place with Shutterfly's and Kodak's online photo services.
Last week, Photobucket announced a partnership with start-up Scrapblog to make it easier for members to put their photos into online (and eventually print) scrapbooks.
Photobucket, the massive photo-sharing site that was acquired by News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Media last year, has partnered with Scrapblog, a start-up that lets members create online scrapbooks.
Through the partnership, whose financial terms were not disclosed, Scrapblog's drag-and-drop application will be available within Photobucket so that users can work their Photobucket albums into scrapbooks and then share or embed them on the Web. Starting in September, printed versions of Scrapblog scrapbooks will be available for purchase.
"Scrapbooks have traditionally been an important part of how people have kept and shared memories offline for many years, and bringing that capability online to Photobucket gives users even more options for enhancing their lives and expressing themselves digitally," Photobucket president Alex Welch said in a release. "We are excited to partner with Scrapblog, and be the first photo and video Web site to integrate a digital-scrapbooking feature directly into the site, making it easy, convenient, and accessible to everyone."
Coral Gables, Fla.-based Scrapblog, founded in 2006, has created scrapbook-related marketing campaigns for brands ranging from Carnival Cruise Lines to the ABC television series Ugly Betty (parent company Disney is an investor). Longworth Venture Partners led Scrapblog's Series A venture round in March 2007.
Later, gator.
Google has announced the shutdown of Hello, a sort of photo-messaging service that became part of the Mountain View family when Google acquired Picasa in 2004.
"All good things come to an end," a placeholder on the Hello.com home page says. "So it is with sadness that we say goodbye to Hello." Guess they weren't so sad that they felt the need to steer clear of goofy plays on words. Hello will fade away on May 15, though Google's photo-sharing service Picasa remains otherwise intact.
"We originally embarked on a mission to make photo sharing easier and more fun with Hello," the message on the site explains. "We plan to keep carrying that torch in new projects to come." That could be interpreted as a hint that Hello's technology may be seen in future Google projects--or not.
As Google Blogoscoped notes, Mountain View now has the domain hello.com. And it's not like Larry, Sergey, and the gang need to sell it for beer money.
Apparently, fast-forwarding through commercials just isn't enough. TiVo announced on Monday that users of select photo-sharing services are now able to access their image collections through its set-top boxes.
The digital video recorder manufacturer has partnered with two photo-sharing services--the Google-owned Picasa Web Albums and Fox Interactive Media-owned Photobucket--in order to enable users to surf through their photo albums as well as their friends' and family members', provided that their TiVo boxes are broadband-connected.
A release from the company emphasized the fact that photos are viewable in the highest resolution possible, which on the TiVo Series 3 and TiVo HD devices means full high definition.
In addition, the TiVo interface makes it possible for users to search the overall database of public Picasa or Photobucket images by keyword.
The Photobucket search interface on TiVo
(Credit: Photobucket/TiVo)It's yet another step in TiVo's quest to make its equipment more versatile than the standard DVR--and to make it an appealing choice in a market that remains tepid.
"At TiVo, we're focused on the entire entertainment experience, from movies to music, and in this case--memories," Jim Denney, TiVo's vice president of product marketing, said in the company's statement. "By working with these well-respected and popular photo-sharing partners, TiVo enables families to share their pictures in new, fun ways."
This fall, TiVo announced a deal with RealNetworks' Rhapsody to bring the subscription-based music service to its devices.
You might have noticed on my Trillian Astra review earlier this week that I used a sliding image-gallery widget to showcase all of the screenshots. That sliding image widget came from the folks at Goodwidgets, a service that provides users with seven free widgets for photo sharing.
Once you've picked your favorite widget, you can upload photos from Flickr, Photobucket, 23 photo-sharing service, or your hard drive. From there, you have a few options to tweak, like color schemes and how big you want it. When you're done adding photos and getting it just the way you want it, you can either share it with others or embed it in your blog or Web site. It's really simple.
What's interesting about the service is the paid element, where for two bucks you can purchase the widget. Buying the "pro" version allows you get rid of the Goodwidgets logo and lets you add more photos to your slide show. In the case of the light-box widget, purchasing the pro version bumps up the cap on photos from 36 all the way to 120.
Goodwidgets is a really neat widget service. Quite a few photo sharing widgets are out there (see Widgetbox's photo-viewer category), but the style and simplicity of Goodwidgets' selection makes your photo galleries look good. Below I've embedded a Goodwidget slide show that I assembled of a recent chocolate fondue party. Try not to lick your screen.
Photobucket and Adobe Systems on Monday are expected to announce a Web-based video-editing tool available from Photobucket's media-sharing site. The free service will be in beta this month to its premium customers and rolled out to all customers in March.
The service lets people take existing media, including photos and videos, stored in a Photobucket account and remix them with captions, soundtracks and other effects. Like any video-editing package, people can drop items, like video snippets, and place them onto a timeline.
Photobucket's Web editor lets you drag and drop video snippets in a timeline.
(Credit: Photobucket)"When you look at the world of social media, everything is about customization. A photo is no longer good enough, a straight video is not good enough. This lets you use a combination of photos, videos and music to build something truly custom," said Alex Welch, Photobucket CEO.
An Adobe representative said that the deal with Photobucket is not exclusive, but declined to offer any details on Adobe's plans.
As far as the name--now referred to as Adobe's Web-based video remix and editing technology--the Adobe representative said that the company intends to announce a formal brand-name in the spring.
Photobucket's Welch acknowledged that there are a growing number of Web-based online editing and mixing tools. He said that its partnership with Adobe allowed the company to launch something that's very intuitive and easy to use. The company now as has 35 million users and is aiming for a service with mass appeal, he said.
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