4 ms·

Good analysis. Obviously, this doesn't handle cases like redundancy and doesn't handle some of other critical workloads the company has. However, it does show h

Good analysis. Obviously, this doesn't handle cases like redundancy and doesn't handle some of other critical workloads the company has. However, it does show how much real compute bloat these companies actually have - https://twitter.com/petrillic/status/1593686223717269504 https://twitter.com/petrillic/status/1593686223717269504 where they use 24 million vcpus and spend 300 million a month on cloud.

judge2020 4y ago
On the other hand, Twitter does (or did) handle over 450 million monthly active users (based on stats websites), with a target for 315 monetizable daily active users (based on their earnings calls pre-privatization). Handling that amount of concurrency and beaming millions of tweets a day to home feeds and notifications is going to be logistically hard.
- WJW 4y ago
  Is that 315 million monetizable DAUs? That sounds like a lot if the total is only 450 MAU. OTOH, 315k DAU seems like it wouldn't be enough to pay the bills.
  - judge2020 4y ago
    There were some quarters with profit, some without; the past few years were mostly without IIRC. They were targeting 315 mDAUs for Q4 2023, but in the final earnings it was only 238 mDAUs. Actual MAU stats weren't public iirc but some random stats sites seemed to say 450m global MAUs, which likely includes people with no ad preferences or who only view NSFW content (which can't be shown next to (most?) ads). https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2022/11/14/twitter-would-need-64-million-subscribers-to-replace-existing-revenue-and-cover-existing-losses/?sh=45d00edda95f https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2022/11/14/twitter...
    - saagarjha 4y ago
      This includes users who aren’t shown ads, like people who are logged out or use third party clients.
- varunkmohan 4y ago
  Posted this on a comment above but systems like Whatsapp likely sent an insane amount of data as well but used only 16 servers over 1.5 billion users at time of acquisition. Modern NICs can handle millions of requests a second - I still feel there is a lot of excess here.
  - veec_cas_tant 4y ago
    Feels like the comparison is irrelevant. I'm guessing WhatsApp would have infrastructure challenges if all of their chats were group messages including the entirety of their user base, search, moderation, ranking, ads, etc. Isn't WhatsApp more comparable to only DMs?
- therealdrag0 4y ago
  Anyone know if MAU includes API clients? Cuz there’s a lot of apps built on top of twitter that pull data right? Thats add a lot of traffic too.
  - saagarjha 4y ago
    Active users includes those, monetizable active users doesn’t.
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
> However, it does show how much real compute bloat these companies actually have No, it doesn’t. It’s a fun exercise in approaching Twitter as an academic exercise. It ignores all of the real-world functionality that makes it a business rather than a toy. A lot of complicated businesses are easy to prototype out if you discard all requirements other than the core feature. In the real world, more engineering work often goes to ancillary features that you never see as an end user.
- varunkmohan 4y ago
  Genuinely asking, why do you think Twitter needs 24 million vcpus to run? This is not apples to apples but Whatsapp is a product that entirely ran on 16 servers at the time of acquisition (1.5 billion users). It really begs the question why Twitter uses so much compute if there are companies that have operated significantly more efficiently. Twitter was unprofitable during acquisition and spent around half their revenue on compute, maybe some of these features were not really necessary (but were just burning money)?
  - threadweaver34 4y ago
    Whatsapp doesn't do ranking.
  - ignoramous 4y ago
    > This is not apples to apples but Whatsapp is a product that entirely ran on 16 servers at the time of acquisition (1.5 billion users). - 450m DAUs at the time of facebook acquisition [0] - Twitter is not just DMs or Group Chat. > It really begs the question why Twitter uses so much compute if there are companies that have operated significantly more efficiently. A fair comparision might have been Instagram: While Systrom did run a relatively lean eng org, they never had to monetize and got acquired before they got any bigger than ~50m? [0] https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/four-numbers-that-explain/ https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/four-numbers-that-explain...
  - xwdv 4y ago
    Whatsapp used Erlang.

judge2020 4y ago

On the other hand, Twitter does (or did) handle over 450 million monthly active users (based on stats websites), with a target for 315 monetizable daily active users (based on their earnings calls pre-privatization). Handling that amount of concurrency and beaming millions of tweets a day to home feeds and notifications is going to be logistically hard.

WJW 4y ago
Is that 315 million monetizable DAUs? That sounds like a lot if the total is only 450 MAU. OTOH, 315k DAU seems like it wouldn't be enough to pay the bills.
- judge2020 4y ago
  There were some quarters with profit, some without; the past few years were mostly without IIRC. They were targeting 315 mDAUs for Q4 2023, but in the final earnings it was only 238 mDAUs. Actual MAU stats weren't public iirc but some random stats sites seemed to say 450m global MAUs, which likely includes people with no ad preferences or who only view NSFW content (which can't be shown next to (most?) ads). https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2022/11/14/twitter-would-need-64-million-subscribers-to-replace-existing-revenue-and-cover-existing-losses/?sh=45d00edda95f https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2022/11/14/twitter...
  - saagarjha 4y ago
    This includes users who aren’t shown ads, like people who are logged out or use third party clients.
varunkmohan 4y ago
Posted this on a comment above but systems like Whatsapp likely sent an insane amount of data as well but used only 16 servers over 1.5 billion users at time of acquisition. Modern NICs can handle millions of requests a second - I still feel there is a lot of excess here.
- veec_cas_tant 4y ago
  Feels like the comparison is irrelevant. I'm guessing WhatsApp would have infrastructure challenges if all of their chats were group messages including the entirety of their user base, search, moderation, ranking, ads, etc. Isn't WhatsApp more comparable to only DMs?
therealdrag0 4y ago
Anyone know if MAU includes API clients? Cuz there’s a lot of apps built on top of twitter that pull data right? Thats add a lot of traffic too.
- saagarjha 4y ago
  Active users includes those, monetizable active users doesn’t.

PragmaticPulp 4y ago

> However, it does show how much real compute bloat these companies actually have No, it doesn’t. It’s a fun exercise in approaching Twitter as an academic exercise. It ignores all of the real-world functionality that makes it a business rather than a toy. A lot of complicated businesses are easy to prototype out if you discard all requirements other than the core feature. In the real world, more engineering work often goes to ancillary features that you never see as an end user.

varunkmohan 4y ago
Genuinely asking, why do you think Twitter needs 24 million vcpus to run? This is not apples to apples but Whatsapp is a product that entirely ran on 16 servers at the time of acquisition (1.5 billion users). It really begs the question why Twitter uses so much compute if there are companies that have operated significantly more efficiently. Twitter was unprofitable during acquisition and spent around half their revenue on compute, maybe some of these features were not really necessary (but were just burning money)?
- threadweaver34 4y ago
  Whatsapp doesn't do ranking.
- ignoramous 4y ago
  > This is not apples to apples but Whatsapp is a product that entirely ran on 16 servers at the time of acquisition (1.5 billion users). - 450m DAUs at the time of facebook acquisition [0] - Twitter is not just DMs or Group Chat. > It really begs the question why Twitter uses so much compute if there are companies that have operated significantly more efficiently. A fair comparision might have been Instagram: While Systrom did run a relatively lean eng org, they never had to monetize and got acquired before they got any bigger than ~50m? [0] https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/four-numbers-that-explain/ https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/four-numbers-that-explain...
- xwdv 4y ago
  Whatsapp used Erlang.