Blog.Photobucket.com: Some updates re: what hitting 25 Million users means

Mike, our VP of engineering thought it'd be good to put the whole 25 Million users milestone in perspective and sent the following around the office.

Just to put a little perspective to the milestone we passed yesterday.

Photobucket has more users then the....

Distance from Earth to Venus -- 25,000,000 miles
Number of acres of lawns in the U.S. -- 25,000,000 acres
Annual number of lightning strikes globally -- 25,000,000
Population of Venezuela -- 25,000,000
Population of Uzbekistan -- 25,000,000
Amount of wool clipped in Wyoming every year -- 25,000,000 lbs.
Number of riders annually on all Amtrak trains -- 25,000,000
Population of Iraq (2004) -- 24,500,000
Population of Texas -- 20,851,820
Population of Australia -- 20,090,437
Population of New York -- 18,976,457
Five times the population of Colorado -- 4,301,261

Now while I wouldn't typically compare Photobuket to a bunch of wool or Uzbekistani citizens, these stats definitely make us realize how huge of an accomplishment this is and how much we've managed to grow over the last few years.

The official press release announcement on this after the jump.
Thanks again everyone!

MJ - Photobucket Marketing

For Immediate Release
PHOTOBUCKET REACHES LANDMARK OF OVER 25 MILLION MEMBERS
Membership growth fueled by consumer sharing of personal media online

Palo Alto, CA – September 27, 2006 – Photobucket (http://www.photobucket.com), the largest personal media company for people to create, manage and share their digital life online, today announced that it has exceeded more than 25 million members.

The site, launched in 2003, has become a creative hub delivering billions of personal photos, graphics and videos daily to over 200,000 different websites – including eBay, Craigslist, MySpace, Blogger, and Livejournal – and enables sharing via email, instant messaging, and mobile devices. comScore Networks reports that Photobucket is one the top 50 most visited websites, with 15 million unique visitors per month.

This announcement follows recent reports by Hitwise and Nielsen/Netratings that Photobucket is the top photo-sharing website in the world, 2x larger than Yahoo Photos, with aggressive growth of more than 2 million new users monthly. Every day over 7 million personal photos, videos and graphics are uploaded to Photobucket for sharing with friends, family and everyone.

“I’m excited that Photobucket is at the center of it all - social media, blogging, sharing online.” said Alex Welch, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Photobucket. “We’re focused on giving our users creative control of their personal media, whether it be to create a widget and link it to their blog, or to email a personal video to a friend.”

Photobucket’s user base has grown 300% over the past year since September 2005, driven by consumer demand for a fast and easy way to share personal digital content using one central online hub.

About Photobucket
Founded in 2003, Photobucket (http://www.photobucket.com), is the largest personal media company in the world for people to create, manage and share their digital life online. With over 25 Million users, Photobucket is a creative hub delivering billions of personal photos, graphics and videos daily to over 200,000 different websites – including eBay, Craigslist, MySpace, Blogger, and Livejournal.

In addition to sharing their lives via blogs, social networks, auctions, message boards and other web sites, Photobucket users share billions of images and videos daily by email, instant messenger, and mobile devices. The company enlists an editorial staff of over 50 people to moderate content and create a safe environment for partners and advertisers.

Photobucket has offices in Palo Alto, California and Denver, Colorado.