The volume of photos on Facebook are 10,000 times larger than the Library of Congress.

One picture may be worth a thousand words, but Facebook photos could be worth 140 quadrillion words, which is equal to 140 billion photos — more than a third of all digital photos taken in one year.

Answering the question, “How many photos have ever been taken?” —3.5 trillion photos — 1000memories went on to figure out how that number has risen steeply with the advent of the digital camera.

The site, which specializes in multimedia online memorials (and as a central sharing site for the living, too), estimated that 2.5 billion people around the world own digital cameras (also including phones that have built-in cameras). Then, if the average person snaps 150 photos this year that would total 375 billion photos.

Facebook’s collection will be 140 billion by year’s end, which makes the social network the reigning champion of memory keeping. (The volume of pictures, if it can be imagined, is kind of mind-blowing: “over 10,000 times larger than the Library of Congress.”)

Just this year, an estimated 70 billion to 100 billion photos will be uploaded to Facebook, which amounts to 20 percent of all photos taken in 2011.

Facebook’s 750 million members are certifiably crazy about photo-sharing. TechCrunch reported that at the start of 2011, more than 750 million photos were uploaded New Year’s Eve weekend.

Way behind Facebook is Photobucket with 8 billion and Flickr, which recorded its 5 billion uploads as of a year ago.

Via MSNBC