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Facebook Applications – Don’t forget the scale question September 13, 2007

Posted by John Furrier in Technology.
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Hey to all you budding Facebook developers – great opportunity right?  You bet but don’t forget the scale question.  If you build a great app you need to think about scale. 

This is a great article that I found on my good old friend GigaOm site.  It’s key to understand that developers need to get a handle on the following.

  • Images – if you have to store or process images beyond Facebooks provision
  • Video storage and processing
  • Heavy storage – DB replication, video, backups, transfers
  • Backup – safe and secure
  • Batch processing – large amounts of cycle-intensive processing all at once
  • Data mining
  • Spike demand handling (the Slashdot antacid)

    • If Facebook wants to be the next Microsoft they better get the develop community under control.  I’m sure that they will.  Right now Facebook has a bunch of happy developers and I predict that thousands of more will join this year.

    Note: I have two main groups:  my profile (John Furrier) and an group dedicated to only entrepreneurs (Entrepreneurs Only).  If you’re on Facebook join in the groups.

    Update: Jeremy Liew has a great post on viral growth.  I like what he says about the mathematics of viral growth.  Jeremey says “If the viral coefficient (the number of additional members a new member brings) in a population is less than one, it grows but eventually hits a ceiling. But if the viral coefficient is greater than one, it grows unbounded.” 

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