DEMYSTIFIYING DATA UNITS
From the more familiar 'bit' or 'megabyte', larger units of measurement are more frequently
being used to explain the masses of data
A DAY IN DATA
Unit
Value
Size
bit
0 or 1
1/8 of a byte
b
463EB
The exponential growth of data is undisputed, but the numbers behind this explosion - fuelled by internet of things and
byte
8 bits
1 byte
B
the use of connected devcies - are hard to comprehend, particularly when looked at in the context of one day
of data will be created every day by 2025
1,000 bytes
1,000 bytes
KB kilobyte
IDC
1,0002 bytes
1,000,000 bytes
MB megabyte
1,0003 bytes
1,000,000,000 bytes
GB gigabyte
1,0004 bytes
1,000,000,000,000 bytes
TB terabyte
petabyte
1,0005 bytes
1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes
PB
exabyte
1,0006 bytes
1,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes
EB
zettabyte
1,0007 bytes
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes
ZB
4PB
yottabyte
1,0008 bytes
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes
YB
of data created by
95m
Facebook, including
*A lowercase "b" is used as an abbreviation for bits, while an uppercase "B" represents bytes.
photos and videos are
500m
shared on Instagram
350m photos
tweets are sent
hours of video
every day
Instagram Business
watch time
100m
Twitter
Facebook Research
320bn
messages sent over WhatsApp and
emails to be sent
two billion minutes of voice and
each day by 2021
video calls made
Facebook
306bn
294bn
emails to be sent
each day by 2020
billion emails are sent
Radicati Group
28PB
Searches made a day
5bn
to be generated from wearable
4TB
3.9bn
devices by 2020
of data produced by a connected car
people use emails
Statista
Intel
Searches made
a day from Google
3.5bn
ACCUMULATED DIGITAL UNIVERSE OF DATA
Smart insights
4.4ZB
44ZB
PwC
2019
2020