The scale of new things, in 11 numbers

Trying to quantify the magnitude of stuff.

There’s an overwhelming number of new things out there. And lately, I’ve been trying to figure out the true scale of it all. Today, I’m going to share some of what I’ve gathered. It’s not a complete picture, but the numbers are staggering.

I’ve organized the list into two sections: The first is new stuff (physical goods you can buy). The second is new information (content you can read/watch/listen to).

Two caveats: This data isn’t always easy to come by. Many of these companies don’t share it freely (although some do), so I’ve had to rely on a few different sources. And it’s important to mention that this data fluctuates often, so you can think of these numbers as a snapshot in time.

Okay, here’s the list.

New stuff

Photo by ANIRUDH on Unsplash

600 million

…products available on Amazon.

200 million

…items for sale at Alibaba.com.

12,000

…pieces of furniture at Ikea.

14 million

…things available on Wayfair.

400 million

…things you can buy at Walmart.com.

3 billion

…toys sold every year.

New information

Photo by Christian Wiediger on Unsplash

500

…hours of video uploaded to YouTube per minute.

95 million

…photos and videos uploaded to Instagram per day.

18,000

…Netflix titles to choose from.

100 million

…songs on Spotify.

125

…Slack messages received per worker per day.

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Phew. Best of luck navigating it all.

Eric