4 ms·

>The company leveraged Instagram's existing monolithic architecture and quickly iterated to create a new text-first microblogging service in record time. So th

>The company leveraged Instagram's existing monolithic architecture and quickly iterated to create a new text-first microblogging service in record time. So they, in fact, had already built out Instagram as a monolithic service based platform and essentially forked it, tweaked it, tested it, and shipped. The title of the article is highly misleading, suggesting they shipped from 0 to full platform in 5 months explicitly due to the fact they were using a monolithic architecture as opposed to a microservice based one.

makeitdouble 3y ago
TBH, it could take more time to clone and tweak a micro-service architecture. Arguably, they'd take another approach altogether in that case (keep some services in common and clone as few services as possible for instance), but it's still notable that they had the option to clone it wholesale in the first place.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
vasco 3y ago
Yeah this is like working for Google and launching "YouTube Texts" where some engineer removes all the actual videos leaving only the code for comments and calling it a new thing.
giongteo 3y ago
yeah, nothing special about infrastructure indeed... They just reuse IG infra and build features on top of it. Mentioning Microservices is so non-sense here, just for the purpose of clickbait.
- randomdata 3y ago
  Remember, microservices refers to the architecture of people. It is the emulation of the service architecture found in the macro economy (i.e. businesses buying and selling services with each other without any direct coordination), but localized in the micro economy of a single business. There is a prevailing idea that large organizations do not have the communication capacity for many people to all work together, believing that more people require more meetings to coordinate, which at some point reaches a critical mass where any change requires more meetings than there is time in the day. Teams emulating the macro economy – a world where you can't get Google on the phone no matter how hard you try, where all you get is written documentation – is thought to be the solution to that problem. So there would be something novel about multiple, disparate teams showing they can all work together under direct coordination while actually getting things done and not get bogged down in endless meetings. But, while the article is light on details, it appears that they actually did stick with a microservices model – creating a copy of Instagram so that the Threads team could provide an independent service without needing to communicate with the Instagram team...
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
yosito 3y ago
That explains why it just feels like a worse version of Instagram.
pjerem 3y ago
0 to full platform in 5 months doesn’t seems impossible when you are Meta, especially for a Twitter-like. Still impressive, but the hard part of launching a Twitter competitor is not technical, especially when you already have a virtually infinite amount of already competent developers and infrastructure and when you don’t need the product to make money asap. The hard part is launching it commercially and giving it enough momentum. Like the adage says, I can code Twitter in a weekend but it will not be Twitter and it will not magically make money.
- blowski 3y ago
  I reckon I could implement 90% of the end-user functional features of Twitter in a weekend. The remaining 10% of the features would take at least another year, and the non-functionals (performance, reliability, observability, scalability, etc) would take me a lifetime. But that second sentence turns Twitter from a useful little tool into a valuable product.
  - nielsole 3y ago
    It's not features you'd be missing but userbase
    - pjerem 3y ago
      Not only, most of twitter’s features are in fact not public facing and are those which are making money. Public facing features are just the loss leading part of Twitter. It’s even probably a little portion of the company’s code base.
  - yashg 3y ago
    Precisely. Most of the developers, including seasoned ones look at an application and say I can build it over a weekend. Yes you can. For your own use. For it to become a real product which is stable and scalable, takes much more time and effort.
  - Irishsteve 3y ago
    I think someone complained about twitter search to elon musk when he took it over saying how he could fix it easily. From memory, he left pretty quickly and said ihe was unable to fix it
notRobot 3y ago
Yeah, and that has downsides they admit! > Despite the apparent advantages of reusing Instagram's platform for Threads (much faster delivery time), Malkani admitted the company introduced a substantial amount of technical debt that must be addressed in the future. If they forked Instagram for Threads I bet the codebase is WAY more complicated than it needs to be.
OJFord 3y ago
Large Company Used Its Employees And Assets To Ship A New Feature, indeed.
- thiht 3y ago
  Who’d have thought of that

makeitdouble 3y ago

TBH, it could take more time to clone and tweak a micro-service architecture. Arguably, they'd take another approach altogether in that case (keep some services in common and clone as few services as possible for instance), but it's still notable that they had the option to clone it wholesale in the first place.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

vasco 3y ago

Yeah this is like working for Google and launching "YouTube Texts" where some engineer removes all the actual videos leaving only the code for comments and calling it a new thing.

giongteo 3y ago

yeah, nothing special about infrastructure indeed... They just reuse IG infra and build features on top of it. Mentioning Microservices is so non-sense here, just for the purpose of clickbait.

randomdata 3y ago
Remember, microservices refers to the architecture of people. It is the emulation of the service architecture found in the macro economy (i.e. businesses buying and selling services with each other without any direct coordination), but localized in the micro economy of a single business. There is a prevailing idea that large organizations do not have the communication capacity for many people to all work together, believing that more people require more meetings to coordinate, which at some point reaches a critical mass where any change requires more meetings than there is time in the day. Teams emulating the macro economy – a world where you can't get Google on the phone no matter how hard you try, where all you get is written documentation – is thought to be the solution to that problem. So there would be something novel about multiple, disparate teams showing they can all work together under direct coordination while actually getting things done and not get bogged down in endless meetings. But, while the article is light on details, it appears that they actually did stick with a microservices model – creating a copy of Instagram so that the Threads team could provide an independent service without needing to communicate with the Instagram team...

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

yosito 3y ago

That explains why it just feels like a worse version of Instagram.

pjerem 3y ago

0 to full platform in 5 months doesn’t seems impossible when you are Meta, especially for a Twitter-like. Still impressive, but the hard part of launching a Twitter competitor is not technical, especially when you already have a virtually infinite amount of already competent developers and infrastructure and when you don’t need the product to make money asap. The hard part is launching it commercially and giving it enough momentum. Like the adage says, I can code Twitter in a weekend but it will not be Twitter and it will not magically make money.

blowski 3y ago
I reckon I could implement 90% of the end-user functional features of Twitter in a weekend. The remaining 10% of the features would take at least another year, and the non-functionals (performance, reliability, observability, scalability, etc) would take me a lifetime. But that second sentence turns Twitter from a useful little tool into a valuable product.
- nielsole 3y ago
  It's not features you'd be missing but userbase
  - pjerem 3y ago
    Not only, most of twitter’s features are in fact not public facing and are those which are making money. Public facing features are just the loss leading part of Twitter. It’s even probably a little portion of the company’s code base.
- yashg 3y ago
  Precisely. Most of the developers, including seasoned ones look at an application and say I can build it over a weekend. Yes you can. For your own use. For it to become a real product which is stable and scalable, takes much more time and effort.
- Irishsteve 3y ago
  I think someone complained about twitter search to elon musk when he took it over saying how he could fix it easily. From memory, he left pretty quickly and said ihe was unable to fix it

notRobot 3y ago

Yeah, and that has downsides they admit! > Despite the apparent advantages of reusing Instagram's platform for Threads (much faster delivery time), Malkani admitted the company introduced a substantial amount of technical debt that must be addressed in the future. If they forked Instagram for Threads I bet the codebase is WAY more complicated than it needs to be.

OJFord 3y ago

Large Company Used Its Employees And Assets To Ship A New Feature, indeed.

thiht 3y ago
Who’d have thought of that