8 ms·

How many photos have ever been taken?

68 points by jonathanbgood 15y ago

rokhayakebe 15y ago
Does this then make the case for the "yet-another-photo-sharing-site"?
- brlewis 15y ago
  I think the need for diverse photo sharing sites is only slightly smaller than the need for diverse word sharing sites.
Jun8 15y ago
Interesting. Incidentally, this would make a great Fermi type interview question, to replace how many gas stations or piano tuners are there in the US.
- gwern 15y ago
  Might be hard to estimate anything but the Facebook numbers, though. I would have a hard time estimating anything to do with the silver halide - annual consumption? Annual silver mining? etc.
- sliverstorm 15y ago
  I still don't understand how a Fermi question makes for a good interview question. How can you make reasonable estimates about something you know nothing about?
  - invisiblefunnel 15y ago
    It's likely everyone you interview knows nothing about it, so it isolates logic and reasoning skills from previous knowledge. The accuracy isn't important.
  - Jun8 15y ago
    I don't like those type of questions either, I said it would make a good Fermi question, not a good interview question :-) For some reason, some people love to ask such questions. I'd rather ask how to perform face detection on 1 trillion images.
templaedhel 15y ago
That picture with Facebook photos in comparison to the other major sites is impressive, I didn't realize they had that much dominace. In other news, please, we haven't (IMO) solved the photo sharing/storing software problem. Snapjoy is close, but until I can have public photos, face (people) based grouping, and tags/event organization, it's not there yet.
- aw3c2 15y ago
  That image is wrong and misleading. Facebook: 140000000000 photos Flicker: 6000000000 photos Instagram: 150000000 photos LoC: Wikipedia says 12000000 which is around the "Facebook has 10000 times more" so let's use that. ----- Let LoC be a square of 1 pixel side lengths. Instagram is 12.5 times as much. So the area would be ~13 square pixels, that leads to side lengths of 3.5 pixels. Flickr is 500 times the LoC -> 500 square pixels -> square with sides of 22 pixels Facebook is 12000 the LoC times -> 12000 square pixels -> square with sides of 110 pixels As image: http://i.imgur.com/gCjqV.png http://i.imgur.com/gCjqV.png Ouch.
  - tseabrooks 15y ago
    Image is definitely wrong based on your numbers but I'm not sure it's "misleading". Your picture also shows a complete dominance by facebook. The difference is big, but not important for the purposes of the article. Especially when you consider how poor humans are at determining amounts of things based on area (see the recent discussions on pie charts).
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
Pynkrabbit 15y ago
Footnote 2 is incorrect, the civil war happened in the 19th century, not 18th :)
- delinka 15y ago
  Appears to have been corrected.

68 points by jonathanbgood 15y ago

rokhayakebe 15y ago

Does this then make the case for the "yet-another-photo-sharing-site"?

brlewis 15y ago
I think the need for diverse photo sharing sites is only slightly smaller than the need for diverse word sharing sites.

Jun8 15y ago

Interesting. Incidentally, this would make a great Fermi type interview question, to replace how many gas stations or piano tuners are there in the US.

gwern 15y ago
Might be hard to estimate anything but the Facebook numbers, though. I would have a hard time estimating anything to do with the silver halide - annual consumption? Annual silver mining? etc.
sliverstorm 15y ago
I still don't understand how a Fermi question makes for a good interview question. How can you make reasonable estimates about something you know nothing about?
- invisiblefunnel 15y ago
  It's likely everyone you interview knows nothing about it, so it isolates logic and reasoning skills from previous knowledge. The accuracy isn't important.
- Jun8 15y ago
  I don't like those type of questions either, I said it would make a good Fermi question, not a good interview question :-) For some reason, some people love to ask such questions. I'd rather ask how to perform face detection on 1 trillion images.

templaedhel 15y ago

That picture with Facebook photos in comparison to the other major sites is impressive, I didn't realize they had that much dominace. In other news, please, we haven't (IMO) solved the photo sharing/storing software problem. Snapjoy is close, but until I can have public photos, face (people) based grouping, and tags/event organization, it's not there yet.

aw3c2 15y ago
That image is wrong and misleading. Facebook: 140000000000 photos Flicker: 6000000000 photos Instagram: 150000000 photos LoC: Wikipedia says 12000000 which is around the "Facebook has 10000 times more" so let's use that. ----- Let LoC be a square of 1 pixel side lengths. Instagram is 12.5 times as much. So the area would be ~13 square pixels, that leads to side lengths of 3.5 pixels. Flickr is 500 times the LoC -> 500 square pixels -> square with sides of 22 pixels Facebook is 12000 the LoC times -> 12000 square pixels -> square with sides of 110 pixels As image: http://i.imgur.com/gCjqV.png http://i.imgur.com/gCjqV.png Ouch.
- tseabrooks 15y ago
  Image is definitely wrong based on your numbers but I'm not sure it's "misleading". Your picture also shows a complete dominance by facebook. The difference is big, but not important for the purposes of the article. Especially when you consider how poor humans are at determining amounts of things based on area (see the recent discussions on pie charts).
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]

Pynkrabbit 15y ago

Footnote 2 is incorrect, the civil war happened in the 19th century, not 18th :)

delinka 15y ago
Appears to have been corrected.