Since the launch of Postlets in April 2005, we’ve been storing all of the photos ever uploaded to the site. About 500,000 of them. As the service continues to experience tremendous growth (thanks to you all!), it’s becoming more challenging and expensive for us to manage. Disk storage and bandwidth, in particular, are a big part of our cost structure and are starting to push our limits. As a result, we had to reconsider how long we hold onto images.

Starting July 15, we will implement a one-year photo retention policy. What this means is that we will permanently delete photos associated with expired and removed listings created more than a year ago. Note that this will not affect currently active listings even if they’re older than a year. We will also retain all listings data so you can always retrieve that information. We don’t anticipate that this will adversely affect anyone, but we just wanted to let you know.

As always, please comment or send us feedback if you have any.