-Exponential Growth Chart- Want to scale a system which can handle over 300 million monthly users, approximately half of which are logging in daily? It’s not an easy task however Facebook has managed to pull off an impressive feat but as many users are noticing: not everything is working as it should. The primary problems exist for the minority, yet rapidly growing population, of hyper-connected individuals who have thousands of contacts. So what’s going wrong?

Facebook Scales Horizontally

Facebook has been the most effective platform so far for attracting a large volume of users on a global scale. In an interview with Fast Company, Mark Zuckerberg spoke about how the same “S curve” growth that the company was experiencing at universities: “I think that now the growth curve that we have is very similar to that, except instead of colleges we have countries.” It’s an impressive feat and all of this has been accomplished with mostly open source platforms.

However Facebook has resulted in new behavior among the younger users who now have grown large lists of contacts. From loose relationships with elementary, high school, and university peers, to the close relationships built with real “friends” and co-workers. The company has provided users with friend lists as a tool for managing those relationships and controlling privacy settings.

Errors Abound

Despite the services provided by Facebook which enable users to stay in contact with a larger volume of contacts, many users have reported having problems. For instance I am unable to use my iPhone Facebook application because I have too many contacts. I can’t load my friends which makes the service practically useless aside from the ability to view my feed and manage the AllFacebook.com Page.

While I happen to have over 4,000 contacts, other users with closer to 1,000 contacts are reporting similar problems as well. Also should I ever navigate to a page which loads up all of my friends in an single window, I end up waiting for about 2 minutes prior to the page loading and my browser unfreezing. It’s become a nuisance to perform a lot of tasks and track applications on the platform due to the issues with my contact list.

Some others have reported browser related issues with trying to configure friend lists and I’m sure there are numerous other small bugs. When you’re looking to manage all of your contacts in a single location however, you want the system to work the first time around in order to make it easy to manage on an ongoing basis. Facebook will have to resolve the friend scaling issue sooner rather than later as the platform is what has enabled users to have more relationships, making this problem a larger one, not just limited to a few individuals.

Have you found similar bugs that occur as you add more friends? Is having 1,000+ friends really that rare?

Inside Social Apps 2012 is Less Than Two Weeks Away

Mediabistro Event

Inside Social Apps, held on February 8-9 in San Francisco, is less than two weeks away. This is the third conference on the future of monetization on social and mobile platforms. Leaders from the industry will share their views on today's most formidable challenges affecting social and mobile apps and games in 2012. Inside Social Apps conferences sell out in advance, so take advantage of early registration pricing. Early bird rates end on February 1, so register today.

777116 CommentsFacebook%27s+Real+Scalability+Problem2009-09-22+13%3A39%3A16Nick+O%27Neill »

I noticed some long display time for my # 600 friends already.

Comment by Facebook User — September 22, 2009 @ 5:44 am
Facebook is doing a great job and they know that they will have to come up with more POWER! MUCH MORE POWER!

There are thousands and thousands of people with 1000+ friends!

I have 3780 friends now and i see that if you realy use your contact lists frequently it takes a lot of time to wait for all your friends to load… especially if i accept friends suggestion and the suggest 20 friends list is loading ….

The same if you want to invite your friends to join a group..

Facebook could look at Care2 where you can invite all your friends….with just a few clicks…

Facebook is a perfect place for people who want to make a difference…but its all about groups and connections…

Namasté

Hans

Comment by Hans Lak — September 22, 2009 @ 5:57 am
Interestingly, it was the friend scaling issue that was part of Friendster's undoing. They kept the "4 degrees of separation" functionality even though it slowed the site down tremendously. These on-the-fly calculations slowed the site to an unbearable level.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/15/business/yourmo... http://www.inc.com/magazine/20070601/features-how...

Do people need to really see all 1,000 (or even 600) friends at once?

Comment by Mark — September 22, 2009 @ 6:00 am
That's unfortunate. Facebook has some of the smartest people on the planet working for them, I'm sure they'll figure it out.

Note: I'm sure there will be many users annoyed with the issues but fail to realize one important detail……when you don't pay for a product you have no right to complain about it.

Comment by Carlos Tobin — September 22, 2009 @ 6:21 am
similar issues with loading friends and I only have just over 400.

other issues are popping up too. Like posting a comment that disappears. Or posts twice.

Comment by Diablo — September 22, 2009 @ 6:33 am
> That’s unfortunate. Facebook has some of the smartest people on the planet working for them, I’m sure they’ll figure it out.

You sure live on a small planet. Most of the 6 billion people in the world likely haven't heard of facebook.

Comment by todd — September 22, 2009 @ 7:14 am
I'm noticing several little things recently, and I don't know whether some of them reflect subtle design/programming changes or are minor bugs. Examples: I get a friend request but can't view the person's page; I return to my home page from some other FB profile (or my own) to find the most recent newsfeed items have vanished; I try to edit the "Friends" section of my profile page, only to find the system doesn't recognize about half of my friends at all. I only have 257 friends! But I suppose that when the issue is scalability, then high I/O will mess up everyone's traffic, not just that of accounts with 1,000+ friends.

Comment by Eric — September 22, 2009 @ 7:41 am
"…when you don’t pay for a product you have no right to complain about it. "

That may be, however "investments" do not always need to be monetary – especially with regards to SM sites like Facebook. Individuals "invest" hours per week on their interactions, posts, and app usage.

(Realize, this statement is slightly tongue-in-cheek as admittedly I do understand what you meant by your quote. And FB does indeed have some of the smartest developers working for them.)

Comment by Justin Stauffer — September 22, 2009 @ 9:14 am
Noticing some major outages with my inbox, very hard to send messages because Facebook freezes and won't allow me to copy and paste. I have to reload and retype.

And, unrelated, I noticed that someone whose updates I removed my web feed still showed up in my mobile feed.. not sure if that was related to my phone app not syncing right away or if it's an actual bug.

Comment by Veronica Reynolds — September 22, 2009 @ 2:21 pm
Wow … major problems with Facebook today. The site was down almost everytime I tried to log on. What the *#$&?

Comment by Dan — September 22, 2009 @ 8:45 pm
One hundred million new users in 5 months – not surprising that there are bugs.

It's quite conceivable that if I took out my high school or college yearbook, I could double my friends list in a week, just among those new members.

In a lifetime, you can accumulate quite a prospect list.

Comment by Juliemarg — September 23, 2009 @ 8:43 am
I have 1700+ contacts and I experience frustrating delays as you are when I encounter any action that the system requires loading all friends. Most of the time I don't want or need that anyway, so it seems to me that Facebook could solve a big part of the problem by bringing up a box that ASKS whether I want all my friends to be displayed, or do I want just one list of friends, or do I want no friends at all. That would greatly reduce my frustration and speed up my work.

Also I am having chronic problems with random strange behavior. The number of messages displayed at the top of the menu is sometimes wrong. I often am unable to access chat. Particularly annoying is the new problem that I first experienced about 2 weeks ago where I perform some action (I can't tell yet if there's any specific type of action or if it's just randomly occurring) that, instead of taking me to the page I'm expecting, takes me back to my wall. I can hit the back button and repeat the action and end up again on the wall. Usually on the third or fourth try I can complete the action and be where I expect to be.

Comment by David Orr — September 23, 2009 @ 10:08 am
I am using an app on FB where I pimped out the 'about me' section with profile pics of my FB-friends..

Since yesterday alot of pics were 'broken' , turns out they relocated the images to a external location..

Comment by madrns — September 24, 2009 @ 12:22 pm
Nick, though I can appreciate your issues (and heck even Arrington's issues over at Tech Crunch), you guys are clearly the vocal minority.

Most of my 20-something friends (who have been on for 2 years of so) have between 150 and 400 friends. The people with 400 are the social media addicts or they're centers of their community (PR people, pastors, etc). My older family (parents, aunts, uncles) typically have about 100 friends.

Honestly, maybe 0.5% of the Facebook users actually have the "too many friends" problem. Frankly, way more users have the "Facebook Lite" problem, which is really where they should be putting their efforts right now.

Yes Facebook would, at some point, like to become the "Universal address book", but that's really not what it's meant to do and it's a long way from getting there.

If you have too many contacts, it's likely time to start leveraging "Address Book" tools like Plaxo or connecting your business contacts to your group instead of yourself personally.

Comment by Yo G — September 25, 2009 @ 8:23 am
Going back to myspace! Didn’t have these problems there.

Comment by tmiddleton — September 26, 2009 @ 7:53 pm
Hi any one noticed major problems signing in today (29th sept). its definatly not at my end, just thought that FB may have some technical stuff going on today, but then youd still expect a '' im sorry we are doing stuff'' note rarther than just taking well over ten minits to eventually not load.

Comment by chris oates — September 29, 2009 @ 8:05 am

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL

I noticed some long display time for my # 600 friends already.

Comment by Facebook User — September 22, 2009 @ 5:44 am

Facebook is doing a great job and they know that they will have to come up with more POWER! MUCH MORE POWER!

There are thousands and thousands of people with 1000+ friends!

I have 3780 friends now and i see that if you realy use your contact lists frequently it takes a lot of time to wait for all your friends to load… especially if i accept friends suggestion and the suggest 20 friends list is loading ….

The same if you want to invite your friends to join a group..

Facebook could look at Care2 where you can invite all your friends….with just a few clicks…

Facebook is a perfect place for people who want to make a difference…but its all about groups and connections…

Namasté

Hans

Comment by Hans Lak — September 22, 2009 @ 5:57 am

Interestingly, it was the friend scaling issue that was part of Friendster's undoing. They kept the "4 degrees of separation" functionality even though it slowed the site down tremendously. These on-the-fly calculations slowed the site to an unbearable level.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/15/business/yourmo... http://www.inc.com/magazine/20070601/features-how...

Do people need to really see all 1,000 (or even 600) friends at once?

Comment by Mark — September 22, 2009 @ 6:00 am

That's unfortunate. Facebook has some of the smartest people on the planet working for them, I'm sure they'll figure it out.

Note: I'm sure there will be many users annoyed with the issues but fail to realize one important detail……when you don't pay for a product you have no right to complain about it.

Comment by Carlos Tobin — September 22, 2009 @ 6:21 am

similar issues with loading friends and I only have just over 400.

other issues are popping up too. Like posting a comment that disappears. Or posts twice.

Comment by Diablo — September 22, 2009 @ 6:33 am

> That’s unfortunate. Facebook has some of the smartest people on the planet working for them, I’m sure they’ll figure it out.

You sure live on a small planet. Most of the 6 billion people in the world likely haven't heard of facebook.

Comment by todd — September 22, 2009 @ 7:14 am

I'm noticing several little things recently, and I don't know whether some of them reflect subtle design/programming changes or are minor bugs. Examples: I get a friend request but can't view the person's page; I return to my home page from some other FB profile (or my own) to find the most recent newsfeed items have vanished; I try to edit the "Friends" section of my profile page, only to find the system doesn't recognize about half of my friends at all. I only have 257 friends! But I suppose that when the issue is scalability, then high I/O will mess up everyone's traffic, not just that of accounts with 1,000+ friends.

Comment by Eric — September 22, 2009 @ 7:41 am

"…when you don’t pay for a product you have no right to complain about it. "

That may be, however "investments" do not always need to be monetary – especially with regards to SM sites like Facebook. Individuals "invest" hours per week on their interactions, posts, and app usage.

(Realize, this statement is slightly tongue-in-cheek as admittedly I do understand what you meant by your quote. And FB does indeed have some of the smartest developers working for them.)

Comment by Justin Stauffer — September 22, 2009 @ 9:14 am

Noticing some major outages with my inbox, very hard to send messages because Facebook freezes and won't allow me to copy and paste. I have to reload and retype.

And, unrelated, I noticed that someone whose updates I removed my web feed still showed up in my mobile feed.. not sure if that was related to my phone app not syncing right away or if it's an actual bug.

Comment by Veronica Reynolds — September 22, 2009 @ 2:21 pm

Wow … major problems with Facebook today. The site was down almost everytime I tried to log on. What the *#$&?

Comment by Dan — September 22, 2009 @ 8:45 pm

One hundred million new users in 5 months – not surprising that there are bugs.

It's quite conceivable that if I took out my high school or college yearbook, I could double my friends list in a week, just among those new members.

In a lifetime, you can accumulate quite a prospect list.

Comment by Juliemarg — September 23, 2009 @ 8:43 am

I have 1700+ contacts and I experience frustrating delays as you are when I encounter any action that the system requires loading all friends. Most of the time I don't want or need that anyway, so it seems to me that Facebook could solve a big part of the problem by bringing up a box that ASKS whether I want all my friends to be displayed, or do I want just one list of friends, or do I want no friends at all. That would greatly reduce my frustration and speed up my work.

Also I am having chronic problems with random strange behavior. The number of messages displayed at the top of the menu is sometimes wrong. I often am unable to access chat. Particularly annoying is the new problem that I first experienced about 2 weeks ago where I perform some action (I can't tell yet if there's any specific type of action or if it's just randomly occurring) that, instead of taking me to the page I'm expecting, takes me back to my wall. I can hit the back button and repeat the action and end up again on the wall. Usually on the third or fourth try I can complete the action and be where I expect to be.

Comment by David Orr — September 23, 2009 @ 10:08 am

I am using an app on FB where I pimped out the 'about me' section with profile pics of my FB-friends..

Since yesterday alot of pics were 'broken' , turns out they relocated the images to a external location..

Comment by madrns — September 24, 2009 @ 12:22 pm

Nick, though I can appreciate your issues (and heck even Arrington's issues over at Tech Crunch), you guys are clearly the vocal minority.

Most of my 20-something friends (who have been on for 2 years of so) have between 150 and 400 friends. The people with 400 are the social media addicts or they're centers of their community (PR people, pastors, etc). My older family (parents, aunts, uncles) typically have about 100 friends.

Honestly, maybe 0.5% of the Facebook users actually have the "too many friends" problem. Frankly, way more users have the "Facebook Lite" problem, which is really where they should be putting their efforts right now.

Yes Facebook would, at some point, like to become the "Universal address book", but that's really not what it's meant to do and it's a long way from getting there.

If you have too many contacts, it's likely time to start leveraging "Address Book" tools like Plaxo or connecting your business contacts to your group instead of yourself personally.

Comment by Yo G — September 25, 2009 @ 8:23 am

Going back to myspace! Didn’t have these problems there.

Comment by tmiddleton — September 26, 2009 @ 7:53 pm

Hi any one noticed major problems signing in today (29th sept). its definatly not at my end, just thought that FB may have some technical stuff going on today, but then youd still expect a '' im sorry we are doing stuff'' note rarther than just taking well over ten minits to eventually not load.

Comment by chris oates — September 29, 2009 @ 8:05 am

Facebook’s Real Scalability Problem

Facebook Scales Horizontally

Errors Abound

Recommended Articles

Inside Social Apps 2012 is Less Than Two Weeks Away

777116 CommentsFacebook%27s+Real+Scalability+Problem2009-09-22+13%3A39%3A16Nick+O%27Neill »

Leave a comment

Follow AllFacebook

Send us a Tip

Social Media Jobs

Let your next job find you!

Featured Company

Jobs of the Day

3D Artist

Healthcare Editor

UX Artist

See all jobs

Upcoming Events

Facebook’s Real Scalability Problem

Facebook Scales Horizontally

Errors Abound

Recommended Articles

Inside Social Apps 2012 is Less Than Two Weeks Away

777116 Commentshttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.allfacebook.com%2Ffacebooks-real-scalability-problem-2009-09Facebook%27s+Real+Scalability+Problem2009-09-22+13%3A39%3A16Nick+O%27Neillhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.allfacebook.com%2F%3Fp%3D7771 »

Leave a comment

Follow AllFacebook

Send us a Tip

Social Media Jobs

Let your next job find you!

Featured Company

Jobs of the Day

3D Artist

Healthcare Editor

UX Artist

See all jobs

Upcoming Events

777116 CommentsFacebook%27s+Real+Scalability+Problem2009-09-22+13%3A39%3A16Nick+O%27Neill »