I got Twittered by Dek about the 2 billionth Flickr photo this morning and I find out it was taken in Sydney. Cool.
This feeds nicely into a talk I gave recently on aggregating trillions of transactions to make web applications. I think the numbers, if not the talk, went over most peoples heads. But then when you see things like Flickr's 2 Billionth Photo, it makes a trillion look small.
Here is a quick run down of my maths;
Put a 1,000 tiny functions together
x
Create 10 bits of joy for a user
x
Get them to come back 100 times
x
Do it for a 1,000,000 users
=
1,000,000,000,000 things to manage.
Get me?
The Flickr maths goes way past a trillion when you add in the 2 billion photos.
Here is my presentation:
Download trillion_transactions_mick_liubinskas.ppt
The point of it is that web applications are a complex interaction of features, value, people and time. It's hard work to get it right and it's a constant battle, which makes cloning something that seems easy to be crazy hard.
So here is some food for thought:
- What's the maths on your product now?
- What's the maths going to be when it gets big?
- Which parts of your equation drive your success? Is it features or is it people coming back?
- Which parts of your equation can be automated and which parts need personalisation and customisation?
- How does your equation change over time?
Thank to you Mrs Smith in Year 8 for helping me love maths.
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