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

So the hot story in the tech blogo’ this evening is that Twitter is acquiring Summize. First of all, who cares. ReadWriteWeb notes that either Jason Chandler or Jason Calacanis "broke" the news. My money is on Jason.

Mike Arrington says that Summize has raised $750k and Twitter over $20 million. He also says he deal "certainly makes sense". While it seems like it does on the surface, I am not sure I agree. It would absolutely be a quick fix for a search function and a replies tab on Twitter, sure. Past that, not so much. Do mainstream users really care about search on Twitter? The replies tab yes, that’s a critical Twitter element.

When Summize presented at the NY Tech meetup (video embedded below), they spoke about very large aspirations to track the real-time conversational Web, not just Twitter. If Twitter acquires the service, that goes bye-bye.

For example, is Summize built on the same platform and language as Twitter is? What would the integration time and cost look like? Would it be quicker to use the money to build their own already integrated into their codebase and to their specs? If they acquiring Summize for their technical talent, that’s a different story. Outside of that possibility, what would Twitter gain strategically?

I’d vote partnership as I did on an earlier post. A full Summize acquisition seems like it would be just to please the tech blogosphere and give Twitter a pinch of goodwill.

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