Data Grows Up (Beautiful Architecture - Chapter 6)

Being an avid user of Facebook, I had a keen interest in how a system is able to support a subscription of over 230 million users. Facebook has become a great ally in communicating with former classmates from high school and college in addition to friends and family members while living overseas.

Facebook was created around the vast amount of social data available. Everything on the site is driven by the data each user has entered. The business logic closely depends on this social data, such as the flow and access patterns of various pages, implementation of search, surfacing of News Feed content, and application of visibility rules to content.

Facebook initially started out a standard n-tier web site, but there was so much more potential. To allow third-party developers to participate, the platform was then developed into an array of web services (Facebook API), a query language, and a data-driven markup language.

Previously, web sites were primarily static or database-driven with data generated by companies. Web 2.0 has turned the tide where websites are still being data-driven but the benefits are being realized as the source of that data is from the users themselves. The larger the network of users, the more information readily available to everyone involved.

Third-party or external applications have access to user data through authentication granted by the user. Once the application has been granted authority, the application utilizes the Facebook API and Facebook Query Language (FQL) in the Web Services. User privacy preferences does limit the amount information available to external applications. The data is only as safe as the preferences determined by the user. Some privacy information is divulged by users willing to give away credit card information and social security numbers to complete strangers. Sorry, software cannot prevent stupidity.

At times, I do think the reading was a tad lower level than required and causing the reading to extend to 40 pages. It is not that information was not interesting, but it might have been a little overkill. Considering the amount of personal time spent on Facebook, it was a nice exposure to how technology has transformed the way data is gathered, distributed, and reused across multiple applications.