Comments on: 10 Billion Facebook Photos – Is That Ecologically Sustainable?

By: home made wind generators

home made wind generators — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 21:39:09 +0000

Incredible stuff. Will definitely visit soon=D

By: Anthony Barba

Anthony Barba — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 20:22:20 +0000

300,000 images per second is just staggering.

By: Matt Peterson

Matt Peterson — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 02:08:40 +0000

There was a similar discussion about Second Life a while ago: http://vertatique.com/?q=virtual-worlds-leave-real-world-carbon-footprint

By: Shai

Shai — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 14:24:46 +0000

No doubt that too much trash is stored on Facebook’s servers, however – if the 12th most populous nation produces half of NYC’s carbon footprint than Facebook is probably the right way to go…

Anyway -

By: Antoine MANSUY

Antoine MANSUY — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 01:06:09 +0000

Great idea
Even if, of course, these figures can be discussed, for the lot of approximations they need, the idea of calculating Facebook carbon footprint was good, funny, and pretty surprising.
Maybe it will give them ideas, and the Facebook people will carry out some more accurate surveys (yeah yeah…)

By: Apurba Sen

Apurba Sen — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 16:26:42 +0000

Chris – Kindly refer to Koomeys estimation on server power consumption.We have assumed the servers are volume server – hence 200W.
http://enterprise.amd.com/Downloads/Technology/Koomey_Estimating.pdf
http://enduse.lbl.gov/Projects/InfoTech.html
http://enterprise.amd.com/Downloads/svrpwrusecompletefinal.pdf

Keith – the server power consumption is more than memory & upgrade.Have a look to the contributing elements here
http://vertatique.com/?q=average-power-use-server

Thanks both for your insights.

By: Keith Lucas

Keith Lucas — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 08:50:34 +0000

I’m sure we all appreciate your efforts to be topical and ‘on trend’, however, your sums are a rather fanciful.
If, for example, I upgraded a 10 year old 1GB hard drive with a shiny new 1TB model I gain a 1,000 fold increase in capacity while newer HDD technologies also enable it also to consume less power and generate less heat (requiring less cooling). I think you will find the real facts about the Facebook servers will tell a similar story and that your statistics, while provocative and entertaining, are simply not credible!

By: Chris Ovenden

Chris Ovenden — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 10:10:16 +0000

Can you explain why, in your figures, servers consume more power than desktop PCs or laptops? Surely they use less wattage, as they don’t have to support power-hungry peripherals, most notably a screen.

By: Apurba Sen

Apurba Sen — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 15:30:22 +0000

Nazz – thanks for your comments.These are ballpark estimates only.

1.The photos here strictly means user uploded photos.So 300,000 is a fair estimation of number of concurrent connection of Facebook.

2.Facebook ecology = Facebook+ Users.There can be multiple activities but PC would consume equal energy unless the system is in power saving mode.

By: Nazz

Nazz — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 14:52:40 +0000

I’m not sure about your calculations.

1) 300.000 images per second does not mean that there are 300.000 users. In each Facebook page there are several images.

2) You consider also the power used by the users pcs. So it’s not correct saying that it’s not only a Facebook consumption. We might say that it’s the power used by Facebook and Facebook visitors, who maybe are using the pc also for other (listening music, browsing other web sites at the same time, checking the email…)

The final result could be very different!