Facebook will start giving your old, unpopular photos less attention

By Kate Knibbs February 22, 2013

Unless you have an especially obsessive ex, your older Facebook photos probably don’t get a ton of attention. Yet Facebook uses just as much precious data storage hosting older, ignored photos as it does digitally preserving your latest Instagrammed meal.

To minimize costs, Facebook is testing a new method of storing older, lesser-viewed photos.

The Oregonian reports that Facebook is testing a different way to archive stale shots using sleeping computers, a system Facebook decided to use given that “82 percent of its traffic is focused on just 8 percent of its photos.”

Now, if you want to relive your 2007 toga kegger party pics, it might take a little longer, because Facebook is moving some aging images to “cold storage.” Most image data sits on active hard drives, which gives users instant access but also requires lots of power, which translates to higher storage bills. Keeping archived images on sleeping computers will save the company a lot of dough.

This doesn’t mean you’ll have to wait hours to see what your crush looked like five years ago during their jam band phase at Bonnaroo. You probably won’t notice the difference in time, or you’ll assume your computer or phone is just going a little slow. So this decision will help Facebook curb expenses without disrupting the user experience all that much – at least that’s what Facebook hopes.

But maybe Facebook users should consider the potential delay a boon. In the extra seconds it takes these older photos to load, perhaps the person looking at them will get bored and decide to do something else. So basically, the “cold storage” policy gives people who once considered Juicy sweatsuits cool a fighting chance at social acceptance.

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