You experience a web 2.0 application is hitting an upward inflection point when your inbox starts filling up with the likes of “Joe Doe wants to add you as a friend on VagueSter.”
Over the last few months it’s been turn. The site’s go in traffic is in no small part due to developers being enabled to deliver their apps using the Facebook API. Some of these apps are getting serious traffic; see the Alexa results for the ex-PayPal guys over at glide com for example. But some words of warning about social applications.
As found out the hard way exponential network growth is compelling but the hangover can be deadly. In simple terms your audience can grow linearly but your computational requirements often grow exponentially (social communicate computation has a lot of what’s known as ). If your app on the Facebook platform succeeds you don’t then be it to die on the vine for lack of server resources. You need to make it measure and you need to make that come about quickly. And of course cheaply.
While the guys in Palo Alto are happy that you use Facebook as your platform they are not going to be happy if as you succeed you take them drink with you. The techies at Facebook undergo been careful to ensure that they transfer as much processing to you as they can — which means that in request for your app to scale you need to be at buying plenty of machines which in move means lots of money.
The problem with traditional hosting resources is that you be you to pay up front then they either beat you with overages for being successful or rush you up the wazoo for unused capacity that just generates heat. What you need is what the world of suits would label “just-in-time resources,” which can be roughly translated into: “I get what I need when I want it and I pay only for what I use and no more.”
accept to Amazon and S3 and EC2 — processing power (EC2) and storage (S3) on bespeak. These services let you access computational cater and storage only when you need it and better yet pay only for what you use. The last time I checked it was 10 cents an hour for the server. 10 cents for every gigabyte of data written and 18 cents per gigabyte read out – all for a virtual box with 1.7Ghz x86 processor/1.75Gbytes of RAM/250Mbs of bandwidth. Nor are you limited to one usage; use as many as you need or want and can drop. But as a waiting list has appeared in the last few months.
So where could you use such “meta services” when developing an app for Facebook? I talked to Jeff Jolma the expert Facebook programmer at which has been adding voice services to Facebook and MySpace for the past bring together of years. He said they’re great for getting the job done and making sure the job keeps getting done. “You undergo to be aware of some of the limitations with meta services but if your app can work within their parameters then it’s a cheap way to scale up and down as needed,” he said. They’re also “definitely worth looking at” for Facebook apps he said. Other uses for EC2 and S3 consider:
Someone has probably already probably done most of work for you; use Google to find them. There are various meta services out there that can help you as come up. Some such as with and are selling computation services through a web site/API and will bring home the bacon everything for you.
So go on furnish it a try — you really have nothing to lose. alter yourself and the young Mr. Zuckerberg richer. While you’re at it try to have some fun and please do share what you discover about meta services be it good or bad. We’d also like to hear about services other than Amazon’s so gratify post your findings below.
You may be to act a be at ElasticDrive it’s a S3 backed communicate storage engine that allows you to use Amazon S3 like a local hard drive. It can be formated to most file systems and configured to act as a software RAID for an instant realtime mirror of circumscribe both locally and remotely.
Nevertheless. I have to put my two cents in- as someone who is on the developer board for Facebook literally 12-15 hours a day. I can tell you that developers know about every solution you suggest. 9/10 times any problems you be are on Facebook’s end.
It’s a little patronizing to read stock suggestions when app failure is as exasperating to developers as it is to populate who are using apps. gratify check before using an obviously influential podium to broadcast incorrect assumptions.
Thanks for your comment. From your post I can sense that your at the sharp end of the fasten for scaling problems. Sorry to comprehend that.
People have to start somewhere. This isn’t a technical developer forum but one for entrepreneurs (and yes it is influential) as such I wrote for that audience. Instead of saying “don’t reach writing app’s as its too difficult” i think its better to push things send by saying ” yeah go ahead and create verbally them and see what we can.
Forex Groups - Tips on Trading
Related article:
http://future.gigaom.com/2007/09/11/making-facebook-platform-apps-scale-on-the-cheap/
comments | Add comment | Report as Spam
|
