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Guest post by Thierry Schellenbach, Founder/CTO of Fashiolista.com, follow @tschellenbach on Twitter and Github
Fashiolista started out as a hobby project which we built on the side. We had absolutely no idea it would grow into one of the largest online fashion communities. The entire first version took about two weeks to develop and our feed implementation was dead simple. We’ve come a long way since then and I’d like to share our experience with scaling feed systems.
Feeds are a core component of many large startups such as Pinterest, Instagram, Wanelo and Fashiolista. At Fashiolista the feed system powers the flat feed, aggregated feed and the notification system. This article will explain the troubles we ran into when scaling our feeds and the design decisions involved with building your own solution. Understanding the basics of how these feed systems work is essential as more and more applications rely on them.
Furthermore we’ve open sourced Feedly, the Python module powering our feeds. Where applicable I’ll reference how to use it to quickly build your own feed solution.
Introduction to Feeds
The problem of scaling feed systems has been widely discussed, but let me start by clarifying the basics:
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