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Bluesky (AT Protocol) vs Instagram Feed

Bluesky (AT Protocol)

Bluesky (AT Protocol)

Federated social network. Your data lives in your own Personal Data Server, and feeds and search are pluggable services that consume the global firehose.

Components (7)

  • Bluesky Client
  • Your PDS
  • Relay (Firehose)
  • AppView
  • Custom Feed Generator
  • DID Resolver
  • Timeline Index

Headline numbers

  • Posts / sec (avg)~870/sec
  • Firehose throughput~5K events/sec
  • AppView timeline index size~50 GB
Instagram Feed

Instagram Feed

Fan-out on write vs read, ranking, CDN.

Components (10)

  • Mobile Client
  • CDN
  • API Gateway
  • Feed Service
  • Post Service
  • Kafka
  • Fan-out Worker
  • Redis
  • Postgres
  • S3

Headline numbers

  • Posts / sec (avg)~3,000/sec
  • Feed read QPS~58,000/sec
  • Fan-out writes / sec~600,000/sec

Key differences

Only in Bluesky (AT Protocol)
None.
In both
  • Client
  • Service
  • Queue
  • Database
Only in Instagram Feed
  • CDN
  • API Gateway
  • Redis
  • S3

Flow shape

Bluesky (AT Protocol) flows
  • Post a skeet4 steps
  • Open the home timeline4 steps
  • ⚠ Main Relay goes offline4 steps
Instagram Feed flows
  • Post a photo (fan-out on write)7 steps
  • Open feed (precomputed timeline)5 steps
  • ⚠ Fan-out Worker is down7 steps
  • ⚠ Timeline cache flushed (Redis restart)4 steps