The photo sharing site Flickr just reached 5 billion photos this morning. Here is a link to photo number 5 billion, a photo of Woodward’s building in Vancouver, taken by Aaron Yeo:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/yeoaaron/5000000000/
Update: Since it became known it was the 5 billionth photo, Aaron Yeo has decided to share the Woodwards Collage picture with a CC license. So here it is:
Despite the fact that social networks like Facebook have become popular places to share photos, it seems that the growth of Flickr continues at the same pace as during the last 3 years, adding about one billion photos per year. (Facebook claims that users uploaded 2.5 billion photos per month, in February 2010.)
I have been tracking the dates when Flickr has passed different milestones and calculated the graph below. Although Flickr seems to be handing out id numbers to each photo somewhat randomely, for example, the graph below has an id number just below 5 billion although it was uploaded after the photo mentioned above, it still seems to be pretty accurate.
Previous milestones for Flickr:
22 Oct 04: 1,000,000
20 Apr 05: 10,000,000
15 Feb 06: 100,000,000
22 Sep 06: 250,000,000
15 May 07: 500,000,000
19 Jul 07: 850,000,000
06 Oct 07: 1,500,000,000
13 Nov 07: 2,000,000,000
17 May 08: 2,500,000,000
03 Nov 08: 3,000,000,000
04 May 09: 3,500,000,000
11 Oct 09: 4,000,000,000
18 Sept 10: 5,000,000,000
Update: Flickr has confirmed on its blog that the site has now reached 5 billion photos.
Excelente blog, noticia muy curiosa la de flickr