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Open TikTok (For You Feed) →Open Instagram Feed →

TikTok (For You Feed) vs Instagram Feed

TikTok (For You Feed)

TikTok (For You Feed)

Video pipeline, ML-driven recommendation, infinite scroll.

Components (10)

  • Mobile Client
  • CDN
  • API Gateway
  • Feed Service
  • Upload Service
  • Ranking Worker
  • Transcode Worker
  • Kafka
  • S3
  • Cassandra

Headline numbers

  • Watch events / sec~580K avg
  • Storage / day~3 PB
  • Recommendation inferences / sec~580K
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 TikTok (For You Feed)
None.
In both
  • Client
  • Cdn
  • Api Gateway
  • Service
  • Queue
  • Storage
  • Database
Only in Instagram Feed
  • Redis

Flow shape

TikTok (For You Feed) flows
  • Scroll the For You feed5 steps
  • Upload a video6 steps
  • ⚠ Transcode workers are overloaded4 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