6 ms·

Scaling Mobile Messaging at Airbnb

78 points by knighthacker 9y ago

frik 9y ago
What monitoring solution do you use these days? You were one of the early NR adopters, but the graph looks like DG. (In case you can share this info.)
- tuckerman 9y ago
  Engineer at Airbnb, but unrelated to this launch. We use both products extensively internally; datadog for custom metrics deployed next to features and alerts in code (https://github.com/airbnb/interferon https://github.com/airbnb/interferon), and New Relic for opinionated application health/performance and client side monitoring. Two talks we've done about our usage of Datadog and New Relic (respectively): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYmVu_IMC20 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYmVu_IMC20 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd_Kla4f86E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd_Kla4f86E Disclaimer: I'm the presenter in the second talk.
- user5994461 9y ago
  Judging by the picture, that's datadog. https://www.datadoghq.com/ https://www.datadoghq.com/
pg_is_a_butt 9y ago
don't they just use twilio?
codezero 9y ago
This might be the first use of "turn of the century" that I've seen relating to 2k – it's wonderful, thanks :)
huangc10 9y ago
Nice read. This is something we wanted to solve for our mobile applications too but we don't get enough traffic (per article, you guys are ~100k msgs/hr) to justify the engineering time required for this. I don't use Airbnb as often as I should but I'm wondering do you guys have data on the users who simply use text messaging on the mobile devices (or other instant messengers?). What led to the decision to spend time optimizing mobile messaging within the Airbnb app than just finding an easier path to connect users through text messaging?
- krashidov 9y ago
  What did you end up using ? Have you heard of Layer?
  - huangc10 9y ago
    Thanks for the tip, and I'll be sure to mention Layer as a solution if/when we tackle this problem in the future. I just checked their site and it looks very promising. After trying to find a solution earlier this year with my product manager, we decided to just stick to what we had (which was simply manual refresh in the messaging view by the user), due to engineering time/cost. Since messaging is not a top priority in the app, we agreed to come back to the problem in the future. However, it is absolutely something I would like to solve given the chance. However, at the end of the day, this kind of messaging solution requires the work of backend engineers which will take up development time.
- bfred_it 9y ago
  Text messaging? No thanks. I need free international communication from my computer, not paid clunky international messaging only from my phone. Plus they want to censor and control the conversation; private texting is not happening.
rdxm 9y ago
scaling (x) at (x)....snore......
- lucasmullens 9y ago
  Is this comment really necessary? What's wrong with companies writing articles about how they solved a complex problem?
tabeth 9y ago
I've only skimmed the article (as of yet), but how is this superior/better than just a dedicated server plus DB for messaging with a simple READ(all), REPLY(to_message) API? This seems like an interesting technical problem, but I can't help but feel that there's a significantly easier solution available. As a bonus: other than the fact that you can see messages in the app, I wonder how this is better than simply using SMS or a personalized anonymous email address per host-guest pair. I've seen variants of this particular problem solved so often I'm surprised there's no open source back-end/platform that solves the back-end piece of this. disclaimer: I haven't worked with anything on this scale, personally.
- toast0 9y ago
  Read all is simple, but is going to use a bunch of data. With a sync api, they cam justify doing small transfers as they happen (if connectivity is available), so the data is already there when you go to read it. Even if there's no background sync, sync on use can be faster to download than a full load on use, and you may be able to display the stale data while validating.
- lucasmullens 9y ago
  Sending an SMS costs money, and for many users email isn't as reliably seen as something like an app push notification.
  - tabeth 9y ago
    I was referring to what huangc10 suggested with letting users communicate "offline" via SMS. I'm also skeptical that email is less reliable than an app push notification. The post itself even suggests that before they made adjustments to their messaging system there were some unreliability. I'd think that the use of email in the way outlined in the post is a pretty "solved problem".
varenc 9y ago
How is the latency when the app is open and waiting to receive a reply? From one of the diagrams it sounds like the API requests a delta update if it receives a push notification, but if the user has disabled push notifications, will the client still know to request an update? Also receiving a notification and then using a new connection to request an update is still slower than something like a web socket/long poll connection where new updates are immediately pushed to clients. Would love to hear how this works.
tyingq 9y ago
This is the sort of thing that came to mind around the recent Twilio stock price drop driven by Uber's decreased use. The whole article is about mobile messaging, but SMS isn't involved at all. I understand Airbnb does use SMS, but apparently only for specific use cases. It's a bid sad, I think, that SMS is being displaced by either in-app messaging services or brand aggregated things like FB messenger. SMS has the advantage that if I don't like my mobile network, I could change providers and not change my address. The whole messaging space is now set to be highly fragmented.
- rahimnathwani 9y ago
  "SMS has the advantage that if I don't like my mobile network, I could change providers and not change my address." Only if you live somewhere number porting is possible. I live in China, where it is not. If I switch carriers, I'll have to switch phone numbers, but luckily iMessage, WeChat etc. can be carried to my new phone.
  - tyingq 9y ago
    I think we're missing something like WeChat that has general appeal across age groups and doesn't come with FB intrusiveness. Well, and the harder part...that has all your friends/contacts using it.
    - rahimnathwani 9y ago
      One advantage of SMS I forgot: there's no gatekeeper, so any person/company can send messages without restriction. And one disadvantage: there's no gatekeeper, so any person/company can send messages without restriction.
  - frik 9y ago
    WhatsApp is dongled to ones phone number. Changing the phone number means loosing your WhatsApp account. Whereas WeChat, iMessage and others aren't dongled to a phone number. How do the WhatsApp users change their workplace? Do you use your private phone (BYOD)? Or otherwise you are screwed, right(?), when you switch the workplace, you loose your work cell phone number, and your WhatsApp account. Or is there a way to mitigate this?

78 points by knighthacker 9y ago

frik 9y ago

What monitoring solution do you use these days? You were one of the early NR adopters, but the graph looks like DG. (In case you can share this info.)

tuckerman 9y ago
Engineer at Airbnb, but unrelated to this launch. We use both products extensively internally; datadog for custom metrics deployed next to features and alerts in code (https://github.com/airbnb/interferon https://github.com/airbnb/interferon), and New Relic for opinionated application health/performance and client side monitoring. Two talks we've done about our usage of Datadog and New Relic (respectively): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYmVu_IMC20 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYmVu_IMC20 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd_Kla4f86E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd_Kla4f86E Disclaimer: I'm the presenter in the second talk.
user5994461 9y ago
Judging by the picture, that's datadog. https://www.datadoghq.com/ https://www.datadoghq.com/

pg_is_a_butt 9y ago

don't they just use twilio?

codezero 9y ago

This might be the first use of "turn of the century" that I've seen relating to 2k – it's wonderful, thanks :)

huangc10 9y ago

Nice read. This is something we wanted to solve for our mobile applications too but we don't get enough traffic (per article, you guys are ~100k msgs/hr) to justify the engineering time required for this. I don't use Airbnb as often as I should but I'm wondering do you guys have data on the users who simply use text messaging on the mobile devices (or other instant messengers?). What led to the decision to spend time optimizing mobile messaging within the Airbnb app than just finding an easier path to connect users through text messaging?

krashidov 9y ago
What did you end up using ? Have you heard of Layer?
- huangc10 9y ago
  Thanks for the tip, and I'll be sure to mention Layer as a solution if/when we tackle this problem in the future. I just checked their site and it looks very promising. After trying to find a solution earlier this year with my product manager, we decided to just stick to what we had (which was simply manual refresh in the messaging view by the user), due to engineering time/cost. Since messaging is not a top priority in the app, we agreed to come back to the problem in the future. However, it is absolutely something I would like to solve given the chance. However, at the end of the day, this kind of messaging solution requires the work of backend engineers which will take up development time.
bfred_it 9y ago
Text messaging? No thanks. I need free international communication from my computer, not paid clunky international messaging only from my phone. Plus they want to censor and control the conversation; private texting is not happening.

rdxm 9y ago

scaling (x) at (x)....snore......

lucasmullens 9y ago
Is this comment really necessary? What's wrong with companies writing articles about how they solved a complex problem?

tabeth 9y ago

I've only skimmed the article (as of yet), but how is this superior/better than just a dedicated server plus DB for messaging with a simple READ(all), REPLY(to_message) API? This seems like an interesting technical problem, but I can't help but feel that there's a significantly easier solution available. As a bonus: other than the fact that you can see messages in the app, I wonder how this is better than simply using SMS or a personalized anonymous email address per host-guest pair. I've seen variants of this particular problem solved so often I'm surprised there's no open source back-end/platform that solves the back-end piece of this. disclaimer: I haven't worked with anything on this scale, personally.

toast0 9y ago
Read all is simple, but is going to use a bunch of data. With a sync api, they cam justify doing small transfers as they happen (if connectivity is available), so the data is already there when you go to read it. Even if there's no background sync, sync on use can be faster to download than a full load on use, and you may be able to display the stale data while validating.
lucasmullens 9y ago
Sending an SMS costs money, and for many users email isn't as reliably seen as something like an app push notification.
- tabeth 9y ago
  I was referring to what huangc10 suggested with letting users communicate "offline" via SMS. I'm also skeptical that email is less reliable than an app push notification. The post itself even suggests that before they made adjustments to their messaging system there were some unreliability. I'd think that the use of email in the way outlined in the post is a pretty "solved problem".

varenc 9y ago

How is the latency when the app is open and waiting to receive a reply? From one of the diagrams it sounds like the API requests a delta update if it receives a push notification, but if the user has disabled push notifications, will the client still know to request an update? Also receiving a notification and then using a new connection to request an update is still slower than something like a web socket/long poll connection where new updates are immediately pushed to clients. Would love to hear how this works.

tyingq 9y ago

This is the sort of thing that came to mind around the recent Twilio stock price drop driven by Uber's decreased use. The whole article is about mobile messaging, but SMS isn't involved at all. I understand Airbnb does use SMS, but apparently only for specific use cases. It's a bid sad, I think, that SMS is being displaced by either in-app messaging services or brand aggregated things like FB messenger. SMS has the advantage that if I don't like my mobile network, I could change providers and not change my address. The whole messaging space is now set to be highly fragmented.

rahimnathwani 9y ago
"SMS has the advantage that if I don't like my mobile network, I could change providers and not change my address." Only if you live somewhere number porting is possible. I live in China, where it is not. If I switch carriers, I'll have to switch phone numbers, but luckily iMessage, WeChat etc. can be carried to my new phone.
- tyingq 9y ago
  I think we're missing something like WeChat that has general appeal across age groups and doesn't come with FB intrusiveness. Well, and the harder part...that has all your friends/contacts using it.
  - rahimnathwani 9y ago
    One advantage of SMS I forgot: there's no gatekeeper, so any person/company can send messages without restriction. And one disadvantage: there's no gatekeeper, so any person/company can send messages without restriction.
- frik 9y ago
  WhatsApp is dongled to ones phone number. Changing the phone number means loosing your WhatsApp account. Whereas WeChat, iMessage and others aren't dongled to a phone number. How do the WhatsApp users change their workplace? Do you use your private phone (BYOD)? Or otherwise you are screwed, right(?), when you switch the workplace, you loose your work cell phone number, and your WhatsApp account. Or is there a way to mitigate this?