Monday, 22 July 2002

• We've doubled the image storage space on all premium accounts!

  Now you can store up to 20MB of images on your premium site. How many images is 20MB? Well, it depends on how big each image is. But the typical image posted to Xanga is about 25-75kb (or smaller), which means you can probably post about 250-800 images to your site!

  Why did we do it? Three reasons:

  1. Because I've been mentioning it for a while now, and we do try to keep our promises

  2. Because we really do want to thank you for your patience and continued support while we stumble and battle our way through this period of explosive growth at xanga.

  3. Because we can... (read on)

  "But," you say, "I thought Xanga was having 'server problems'... How can you offer more storage space?!?"

  Fantastic question! The short answer is that storage has never really been a problem - the real problems that we're tackling are bandwidth and processing.

  If you're having trouble following, no worries - it's actually pretty complicated. Let me try to explain with an easy metaphor...

  Storage, Bandwidth & Processing - The Bookshelf Metaphor

  Ok - take a look at your bookshelf (if it's empty, or you don't have a bookshelf, just imagine one filled with books... and sometime soon go get some books! ).

  • Storage - First, how much effort does it take to let the books just sit there and collect dust? None - that's storage. It takes almost no effort, and chances are you've always got some extra storage space available. Even if your bookshelf looks totally packed, you can probably find room for at least a few more books.
    
    
  • Bandwidth & Processing - Now, how much effort does it take to read one of those books? It takes real effort - that's bandwidth. And how much effort does it take for you to write a book report or discuss the book (intelligently ) with your friends? It takes even more effort - that's processing.

  You can think of Xanga's servers as bookshelves. It doesn't take much effort to store stuff on them, and there's always room for storing a little bit more. But when you want to read something (i.e. read any page on xanga) or write about it (i.e. post a comment, write a new entry, even change your profile information or the look of your site) - it takes work.

  Now let's look at what happens when we add new servers

  Again, let's use the bookshelf metaphor. Let's say you start with one bookshelf and then add an identical one to your room. Congrats - you've just doubled your storage space!

  But what about your reading (bandwidth) and writing (processing) abilities? Well, if you need a whole new bookshelf, then you're probably doing a lot of reading and writing. So yes, you're probably a faster reader and maybe even a faster, better writer than you were. But are you twice as fast? Nope, just a little bit faster and better.

  It's the same with Xanga's servers. When we double the number of Xanga servers, we get a big increase in storage space (not anywhere close to double, but a big increase), and a much smaller increase in processing capabilities.

  So we're actually accumulating a little extra storage space every time we add new servers

  And we've finally reached the point where we can share some of that extra storage space with you. Enjoy!

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