Jeff Rothschild of Facebook’s “A Match Made in Heaven? The Social Graph and the Database”
Taking a look at the social graph and what it means for the database.
The social graph:
- At it’s heart it’s about people and their connections.
- Learning about people who are in your world.
- Can be a powerful tool for accelerating the use of an application.
“The social graph has transformed a seemingly simple application such as photos into something tremendously more powerful.” We’re interested about what people are saying about us, and about our friends. Social applications are compelling.
Facebook users blew through the estimate for 6 months of storage in 6 weeks. It is serving 250,000 photos per second at peak time, not including profiles. Facebook serves more photos than even the photo sites out there, and serves more event invitations than any other website out there.
E-mail invitations are an example of the power of the social graph. If you get a newsfeed or an invitation that tells you 12 friends are attending an event, you have more information, and then can have a better decision on whether or not you want to go. (more…)