Facebook tech infrastructure needs constant care

Started in a dorm room four years ago, the social networking site Facebook now claims to be the fourth most-trafficked site in the world. Ninety million active users pound on 10,000 servers every day, uploading millions and millions of pieces of information in a given month. For example, "friends," who socialize in 21 languages, add 500 million photos per month.

At last count, Facebook stored 6.6 billion photos total, more than any other photo site. Roughly 400,000 developers and entrepreneurs have built 25,000 applications for the platform and about 140 new applications are added per day. (For more on Facebook's application user interface appeal, see Why Microsoft Should Bring a Facebook-like Look to SharePoint and Web 2.0: Companies Gain Competitive Edge with Social Networking Tools).

Overall there are 25 terabytes of cached data available to help Facebook's 2,000 databases serve up user requests.

Yeah, the infrastructure fairly boils over with activity and Jonathan Heiliger is the lucky VP of technical operations who gets to stir the pot. Heiliger, who has run technology for several start-ups and advised venture capitalist firm Sequoia Capital, also directed site engineering for Wal-Mart's website. He joined Facebook in October 2007 to oversee its technology set-up, which many of its 600+ employees tinker with continuously. Whew! It's a good thing Heiliger lists as an interest (on his LinkedIn profile!) "anything 24 x 7."

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