Comment by gjm11

My reaction was: "20x20 pixels = 400 pixels so he's taking 10 bits for each pixel; no way should that be happening". So I copied the image into paint.net (I happen to be on a Windows box here) and told it to save it as a PNG. 998 bytes.

(I think it takes up 4k on my HD, but that's because of filesystem inefficiency; it would take up 4k if it were a text file just saying "tweet", too.)

I do agree with the general point, though: for most purposes 998 bytes of text (more if compressed) will tell you more than that little tweeting-bird image.