See 1.2 Billion Facebook Profile Pics in a Single Glimpse

Locate your profile on 'The Faces of Facebook' project

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Natalia Rojas / The Faces of Facebook

With more than a billion active profiles, Facebook’s ubiquitous reach can feel overwhelming at times. A new project, “The Faces of Facebook,” paints a simplified picture of the masses that comprise Mark Zuckerberg’s social media phenomenon: A single page houses members’ profile photos arranged in chronological order by when they first joined the site.

Upon entering the app, the initial landing page reveals a granular, technicolored screen representing the 1.2 billion profiles with photos (profiles with the default Facebook silhouette are not included). You can then zoom in to focus on individual faces or click on a location icon in the top right of the graphic to link your Facebook account to the map and find out where you stand in the timeline of building the worldwide social media community.

Connecting to the app posts a status update indicating your placement on the profile map — with your permission — but doesn’t show you directly where your picture is located in the timeline itself if you customized your profile with a name instead of sticking to the default numbering system (www.facebook.com/name). Creator and freelance designer Natalia Rojas told TIME this is to avoid violating the social media site’s privacy policy by not storing any names or personal information.

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Natalia Rojas / The Faces of Facebook

Rojas cooked up the idea while playing with the Facebook API, finding a way to access every member’s profile picture with a simple, but not obvious algorithm. She says the coding took a year and a half to finish. There are some kinks to work out, including a bug Rojas is working on to support an influx of traffic, so don’t be deterred if a gray box appears while scrolling over the map. She promises it will all be fixed soon.

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