Flickr reaches 2 billion photos
A eucalyptus against a blue sky illustrates the challenge rival photo-sharing sites face.
- Shankland covered the tech industry for more than 25 years and was a science writer for five years before that. He has deep expertise in microprocessors, digital photography, computer hardware and software, internet standards, web technology, and more.
A user named yukesmooks from Brisbane, Australia, posted the 2 billionth picture to Flickr Tuesday, a notable milestone for the photo-sharing site.
That's a lot of photos. Its sheer magnitude illustrates the challenge that Microsoft and others face in trying to reproduce what Flickr has built.
The shot itself, artfully named "Picture 098," shows a gum tree, according to the Flickr blog posting noting the achievement.
Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, the trees are called eucalyptus and other, less charitable names because of their rampant spread across the local biome; the handful of leaf-munching koalas at the local zoo haven't been enough to check their weed-like profusion.
OK, I admit it, I'm among those with eucalyptocidal tendencies. But at least the picture itself isn't some photo of inebriated college students mugging red-eyed for the camera.