Facebook galleries now store 200 photos each

By Nate Lanxon on 21 May 2009, 10:56am

For those of you continually perplexed by Facebook's insistence that 60 photos is all an online photo gallery needs, prepare to rejoice: you can now store a full 200 photos in each of your Facebook galleries.

By letting users upload three times as many photos, expect Facebook's photo stats to skyrocket to even more astronomical levels.

Right now, the site gets 850 million photos uploaded to it by users every month. It stores 15 billion user photos, which uses up 1.5 petabytes -- that's over 1,500 terabytes, or 1.5 million gigabytes -- of storage, and 25TB of additional storage is required each week for new photos alone.

Facebook Vs. Flickr

It's interesting that despite photos being just one element of Facebook, it is now the largest photo-sharing site on the planet. It beats Flickr, which at last count hosted less than a quarter the number of photos Facebook does.

Though quality of content is a key differentiator between the two sites -- in our experience, Facebook largely comprises snapshots of parties, whereas Flickr's photo enthusiast audience often contributes more artistic work.

Flickr still stands as the most feature-packed option of the two, with integrated photo editing, touch-up options for removing red eye and paid professional accounts for unlimited storage of full-resolution pictures.