How does Facebook work? Facebook:Facebookis one of the major social networking platforms that provide a wide range ofinteraction and communication worldwide. Mark Zuckerburg is the owner ofFacebook. Facebook has millions of user all around the world.
Facebook was primarilydesigned for students of Harvard which was later expended to the student ofother colleges too but now everyone can use it. The old name of Facebook wasThe Facebook.com which later changed to only Facebook. How Facebook works:Theworking of Facebook can be divided into two part i.e.1. Infrastructureof Facebook2.
Outer featuresof Facebook Infrastructure of Facebook:Facebookis using range of software, tools and programming languages to build its coreset-up. It is using LAMP which includes Linux, Apache, PHP and MySQL withMemcache on front end and Hiphop for PHP, Cassandra, Thrift and Haystack onback end. Let us explain in detail;LAMP:Facebookcan still be said as LAMP site, yet it has extended its operations forincorporating other services and elements.· Facebook isusing PHP that is a programminglanguage. It has broad support and an efficient designer community.· MySQL isused by Facebook to maintain speed and consistency.
It is a key-value store, becausethe data on Facebook’s data is spread randomly among a vast set of instances. Forcustomization, a custom partitioning scheme is developed by Facebook where a universalID is allotted to whole data. Custom archiving scheme is also introduced byFacebook to check the per-user frequency and freshness of data.
· Facebook uses Linux which is a computer operationalsystem. It is customized, secure and open source system. The Linux is run on Apache HTTP servers. Apache is also anopen source server.
Memcache:Memcache is one of the famous software which is usedby Facebook. As name specifies, Memcache system is a memory catching system. Itis used to speed up database driven websites, thus it is used by Facebook too. Itcaches the data in RAM so that the reading time is reduced. It is the Facebook’sbasic system for catching memory.
Hiphop for PHP:Hiphop is a scripting language and is comparativelyslow as to the code that runs on a server. Hiphop converts PHP into enhancedC++ code. G++ is used after that to compile for better performance.Cassandra:Cassandra is a database storage system which holds alarge amount of data. The data is spread among many servers.
It is used by Facebookto control Facebook’s Inbox Search feature.Thrift:Thrift is a cross-language framework that ties C++, PHP,Java, Python and other languages together. It manages cross-language development services. It is an open sourcesthat supports many languages.Haystack:Haystack is a photo storage system of Facebook. Itis High performance system. Haystack is an object store system which can storeother things not essentially photos. Each photo uploaded on Facebook is storedin four resolutions.
Millions of photo are uploaded on Facebook so Haystackreally does hard job of managing photos. These are the main things that built the infrastructureof Facebook. Apart from these Facebook has many other things in infrastructuresuch as Big Pipe, Scribe, Varnish, Hadoop and Hive. Features of Facebook: After infrastructure,here comes the outer features of the Facebook which make Facebook look moreattractive and these features are used by millions of the user on Facebook. Letus explain these features;Making anaccount on Facebook:Before using different features of Facebook, a userhas to create a personal account on Facebook which is commonly known asFacebook’s user ID. For this purpose user needs to sign up on Facebook.
Facebook has provided facility to signup via email account as well as viamobile number. If a person has no email, he can sign up to Facebook using hismobile number. For creating an account on Facebook user provides his personalinformation to Facebook such as name, city, date of birth etc. this practice isdone to make a personal identity of a user. After signing up, a user is free touse different applications and features on Facebook which are as follows;Update Status:With his feature, a person can share his thoughtsand views with other people. He can post photos, videos, files and views usingthis feature.
He can set privacy of uploaded items to the people he wants toshare his status with. He can upload file simply by choosing desired item fromthe file folder.Photo application:Photo application is one of the awesome applicationsprovided by Facebook to its users. It allows users to upload unlimited photoson Facebook. Using this application a user can also tag other people in hisphotos. After tagging photos will be appear both on the wall of person whouploads photo and the other who is tagged in photo. People can share the photowhich is visible to them. They can share photo to their wall, their friend’swall, public pages and joined groups.
Video application:This is also an amazing feature of Facebook. Usingthis, a person can upload videos on Facebook. Video can be uploaded in anyformat. These videos can be downloaded by viewers.
Facebook also has a privacyoption for video to set them visible for the people of our own choice.Facebook groups:Person can make groups on Facebook to keep interactedwith people under a same platform. Unlimited members can be added to thegroups. There are various groups on Facebook like study groups, entertainmentgroups, informative groups and scholarship groups.Facebook pages:A person can create a public page on Facebook. Anyperson can follow, like and send message on public pages.
Public pages of celebritiesand famous personalities are a great source of mass interaction andcommunication. This can also be used for business purpose where a person canpromote his fan following or his business.Events feature:With this feature, a person can manage an upcomingevent. Person can create an event so that people come to know the event easily.
The event management can provide information to the people related to theevent. Facebookmessages:With the message feature of Facebook, a person cansend and receive message personally and in group too. A person can make a messengergroup too where more than one persons can be added for chat and messages.Facebook’s separate Messenger applicationis also available where a person can send and receive message without logginginto Facebook application.Comments:By using Facebook’s comment box, a person can expresshis views by commenting on the post, photo or video.Emoji, stickersand gifts:Facebook provides this feature to express our viewusing smiles and emojis without using words. Stickers and gifts can be alsoused for this purpose.
It adds charm to words too. On Facebook a person has option of liking the post,sharing and saving it, making friends by sending them friend request, using allthese features and many more.
