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Source:Mashable!

Sometimes I forget how big the Internet is, and then something reminds me just how flabbergastingly, enormously huge the damn thing is. This time it’s Facebook, whose software engineer Doug Beaver announced that it now hosts a total of 10 billion photos. And it’s not even exclusively a photo sharing site!

Furthermore, since Facebook stores four sizes for each stored photo, this actually translates to 40 billion files. However, what I find fascinating about this is that Facebook is no Photobucket; it’s not just some repository (at least from what I’ve seen) where people dump all kinds of images just because they can. Vast majority of photos I see on Facebook are actually real life photographs taken by users; I’m not sure if this means much in the grand scheme of life, universe and everything, but it seems like quite an accomplishment.

It’s also a worrying sign for photo sharing social networks such as Flickr. Yes, Flickr has many additional features, and the images can be bigger, but ultimately people use Facebook for the same thing - sharing photos with their friends. Add to that the fact that photo management on Facebook is very elegantly done, with some simple editing options such as rotating and tagging added into the mix, and you’ve got yourself a nice, large photo sharing site for not-too-demanding users - and all your friends are already using it. It’ll be interesting to see what photo sharing social networks will do to differentiate from Facebook.

If you’re the number crunching type, here are some other facts and figures from Facebook’s photo vault:

* 2-3 Terabytes of photos are being uploaded to Facebook every day

* They have just over one petabyte of photo storage

* They serve over 15 billion photo images per day

* Photo traffic peaks at over 300,000 images served per second

Perhaps that’s why Facebook Chat and Live Feed keep dying on me.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Who’s Investing In Facebook: Google Or Microsoft?Is Yahoo Still in the Race for Facebook?Bubblicious: Facebook Valued at 100x SalesFlickr Facebook App is Now AvailableViacom: We Won’t Buy Facebook, But Maybe YouTubeWill Microsoft Buy Facebook?Flickr Uploadr 3.0 Now Live

Source:Mashable!

When Twitter acquired search engine Summize, it immediately rebranded and relaunched it as Twitter Search. Oddly enough, this functionality hasn’t been built into the regular Twitter pages just yet, but CNET has noticed this functionality on a screenshot from GetSatisfaction’s Twitter support page, which discusses some other new features such as “nudge.”

Is it an accidental uncovering of a new feature or a mistake? I’d say it’s the former, since integrating Twitter search with the main site is a logical — and highly requested by the community — step for Twitter. This screenshot probably means we’ll see it implemented fairly soon.

[image credits: CNET and GetSatisfaction]

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Twitter Launches People SearchTwitter Adds GMail Contacts ImportTwitterLinkr: Necessary or Quite Dull?Alleskar Acquires German Twitter Clone DukuduTwitter Acquires Summize; Launches Official Twitter SearchDon’t Send Bac’n: Use TwitterSearchRemember The Milk with Twitter

Source:Mashable!

AmieStreet has revamped its site design to focus more on music discovery, including launching a new media player with social features. The company, which allows artists to upload their own music and prices it based on customer demand, also announced that is currently raising another round of financing - its Series B. AmieStreet received an investment from Amazon last year.

The new site has been redesigned from top-to-bottom, greatly simplifying the way users can browse and find new music. For instance, navigating genres from the “browse” music page has become much more user-friendly, with a new navigation bar down the side. Meanwhile, artists pages have been revamped to better section off content, with separate pages for each album, artist info, and seeing what other users are fans of the artist.

Another nice feature is that on the Recommendations page, you can see exactly why a song is being recommended – for example, what songs you’ve purchased and what previous recommendations you have enjoyed that makes the site think you’ll like the new music.

One of the more significant upgrades on the site comes on the Web-based media player. In addition to being able to browse through all of your music and playlists, you can now also look through your friends’ tunes via an integrated buddy list. While you’ll need to own a track in order to hear the full stream, co-founder Joshua Boltuch notes that many of the previews on the site are at least a minute long, as the indie artists that make up much of the content are more willing to give away more for free.

Meanwhile, AmieStreet’s music catalog has been exploding over the past year. Since the Amazon investment last summer, the company has grown its database from 100,000 to more than 1 million tracks. Additionally, the company claims that each customer is spending $30 per year on average, with the customer base recently growing 18% month-over-month.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:AmieStreet’s Music Community Funded by AmazonLonelygirl15 to Feature AmieStreet ArtistsAmie St Facebook App for Your Fantasy Record LabelGoogle Loses A Senior Sales VetMazda3 Concept Car Contest on FacebookFacebook Guy Dead at 3: Poke in PeaceDesign by Humans is a Threadless Clone

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 15th, 2008 at 9:37 am and is filed under News, music, web 2.0, web, amazon, venture capital, new york, AmieStreet, online music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.