A snapshot of one minute on the internet, today and in 2012

Industry reports from investment banks are turgid things, rarely fit for human consumption. A recent report about big data from boutique bank GP Bullhound, however, contains this gem.

This is not entirely accurate: The number of photos uploaded to Facebook every minute now exceeds 243,000 (pdf, p.33). But it is a wonderful little cross-section of what happens on the biggest, most recognizable services on the internet.

Yet it remains a snapshot. To better understand what these numbers mean, it is worth looking to a similar set of figures released by Intel in March 2012. (Warning: hideous infographic to follow.)

Bear in mind that these are very different metrics. The number of hours uploaded to YouTube can’t compare to the number of photos uploaded to Facebook because the former could very well come from fewer, longer videos. And some numbers are missing, though they can be found elsewhere. Still, the two sets…