Business Logs

Web 2.0 Scalability In The Bullseye

Wednesday, December 7th, 2005 by Mike Rundle

Jeremy Wright posted an entry the other day titled, “Web 2.0 Companies Need To Scale” where he talked about how infrastructure scalability is sometimes not written into the plans of new “web 2.0″ companies and I agree. He then continues to talk about how executives at companies want 3 or 5 9’s of uptime (99.999% uptime) but aren’t willing, or aren’t aware of, the massive cost at each step of the way. I thought his article definitely needed to be written, and kudos goes out to Jeremy for having the foresight and cojones to actually write it! Oddly though, that article has been under fire for a day or so now and I think some of what Jeremy is saying has been misinterpreted.

Jeremy’s article was analyzed yesterday by an engineer who runs Feedlounge and he was probably not too happy to be targeted by Jeremy’s entry directly. Jeremy talks about how some “web 2.0″ companies and services like Feedster, Technorati, Delicious, Google Analytics, etc. have been wrought with scalability and server downtime issues and I’d have to agree. Paul wrote about Technorati’s issues a few months back, but now they addressed them all and I use Technorati more than I use Google.

The article was given even more gasoline to burn on when the Gigga Man himself, Mr. Om Malik, wrote up his own thoughts on the matter which actually coincide with what Jeremy was talking about. Business plans need to think about their infrastructure if they plan on supporting lots of users. Companies who don’t think about scalability are probably going to be suffering the consequences. All true stuff. I agree. Well, David from 37signals vehemently disagreed.

David interpreted Jeremy’s thoughts as, “all web 2.0 companies need to have 5 9’s of uptime in order to be successful” and then went off on a pretty good rant about how planning for what you’re at right now is a better idea than purchasing 7 figures worth of load balancing equipment before you’re got a working prototype. I agree with David’s point about not wasting money on things you don’t need yet, but I truly don’t think Jeremy intended his entry to be a Ten Commandments of Web 2.0 Scalability. He merely pointed out that some companies have been having downtime issues, and that they should have been thinking about scalability right as they saw the issues pop up. I don’t think he was insisting on spending ludicrous amounts of money on mesh right away, but maybe I’m mistaken.

Liberalcowboy at Jack Of All Blogs picked up on all the hullabaloo and mocked some of the B5 guys, and then in the comment section all hell broke loose as the B5 guys, Liberalcowboy, Scrivs, and a bunch of other people started voicing their opinions about lots of stuff. Crazy times.

I’m sure Jeremy never imagined his seemingly innocent entry would get around as much as it did, but that’s the weird thing about the blog world. Things you don’t think matter probably matter to somebody, and the entries you spend a lot of time on might not get any comments at all lol. Go figure!

Reader Comments

4 Responses to “Web 2.0 Scalability In The Bullseye”

LiberalCowboy Says:

It’s usually the entries you spend a lot of time on that amount to nothing and the ones you write on the fly that get all the attention.

December 7th, 2005 at 3:42 pm

Rick Turoczy Says:

Poignant analysis, which of course I ignored, gravitating to the bottom, as that struck me, personally. I mean, it provides a defensible point for explaining my lacking distribution, and conversation: I spend too much time thinking about my blog entries.

But, I know, in reality, that–in combination with the content–there is also a fame factor at play here. If I had written the same exact entry, would it have stirred up as much hubbub? Not likely. There aren’t that many people reading my opinion.

If Howdy Doody had commented on uptime, would it have done anything? Not likely, because people aren’t looking for his opinion on that.

It’s when you get the well-distributed bloggers making caustic statements about their purported areas of expertise that you see this stuff start to swirl. And then it becomes a huge game of telephone through out-of-context quotes and random comments.

An interesting dynamic indeed. And one to which I tend to contribute.

December 7th, 2005 at 8:44 pm

Mark John Says:

It looks like almost every blog i signed up on, this has been talked about. I ended up riding the wave on my blog post.

I think the first thing that every web service should look into, is start by building simple, clean, and scalable source codes. I think we should all go back to our old school days when computer resources where scarce (386dx, 16k memory, 640kb hard drive), and build web apps today with that mindset.

December 7th, 2005 at 10:44 pm

Jeremy Wright Says:

Good post Mike. As someone, somewhere (in the last 24 hours) noted, what I’m saying (if you need uptime, plan for uptime), what Om’s saying (if your business plan doesn’t include uptime you’re toast) and what David is saying (focus on users and features) are all compatible.

Like any business, this is a balancing act. There isn’t a “right” or “wrong” answer :)