scaling twitter is easy. it is getting the users that is hard. I can say this because I was part of a service in 1999 that had more users and volume (bytes/hits/etc.) yet didn't have nearly the same issues.
I can say this because I was part of a service in 1999 that had more users and volume (bytes/hits/etc.) yet didn't have nearly the same issues.
Not to be rude, but I doubt it.
Twitter currently has 175 million users[1]. Estimates in 1999 for the online population of the entire internet were 259 million, with 110 million in the US [2].
In 1999, I imagine Yahoo and maybe a couple of other sites (Microsoft/Excite/AOL/Lycos?) were getting similar traffic numbers to what Twitter does today. BUT the scaling is very different, because Twitter requires fan-out of messages, which none of those sites did.
