Why it matters

Feed design classic question. Understanding shapes social apps.

Advertisement

The architecture

Fanout on write: push to each follower's timeline.

Fanout on read: pull from followed accounts on request.

Feed strategiesFanout on writepush to followersFanout on readpull on requestHybridfor celebrity accountsCelebrity problem: 10M followers = 10M writes per tweet; hybrid solves
Feed strategies.
Advertisement

How it works end to end

Hybrid: fanout on write for normal; fanout on read for high-follower accounts.

Caching: hot feeds in Redis.

Ranking: personalization.