Not products in the typical sense, but these are some interesting technologies coming out of Facebook that I can list off the top of my head (many of which I have used personally):

* https://engineering.fb.com/2014/06/10/web/open-sourcing-haxl...

* https://osquery.io/

* https://rocksdb.org/

* https://fbinfer.com/

* https://flow.org/

* https://prepack.io/

You just listed a lot of tools where a deep knowledge of data structures is extremely important :)

Most of these things need to be created to scale and stabilize the existing system.

I mean you listed several database libraries, static analyzers, and a code optimizer.

Is it your suggestion that those kinds of applications do not require solid knowledge of a variety of different data structures and algorithms?

> I mean you listed several database libraries, static analyzers, and a code optimizer.

Correct.

> Is it your suggestion that those kinds of applications do not require solid knowledge of a variety of different data structures and algorithms?

No -- precisely opposite.

Your response confused me quite a lot, but after some thought, I think I've realized how things have become mixed up. I took this for sarcasm:

> Which innovation of Facebook are you describing? Instagram, WhatsApp, or the stories?

Why did I take that for sarcasm? Because it is apparent to me that Instagram, WhatsApp and stories are not innovative. So I thought the main point of the poster I was replying to was to take a dig at Facebook. I didn't realize that we were in agreement about the importance of data structures and algorithms, but then I also didn't realize that we were still on that topic: my intention was purely to refute the [what I believed to be the implied] notion that nothing innovative was happening at Facebook.

I listed the most innovative things that happened. They were product innovations that could have killed Facebook as a company, not RocksDB or React. At the same time I'm a software engineer, and I could write a database much easier than create something that grows faster than Facebook.

I use instagram and WhatsApp, no Facebook anymore (except messenger), as young people went there (and I'm following).

TikTok is a bit too much for me though, I think creating videos for it takes too much time, while for Instagram it's easy to take nice photos while I'm travelling.

Thanks for the clarification. We're in total agreement.