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A comment on WhatsApp scaled to 1B users with only 50 engineers. Parent comment

Re:WhatsApp scaled to 1B users with only 50 engineers by Jensson on Monday October 25, 2021 @11:45AM (#28989127)
> The reason they were able to scale so large with so few devs is simple, their product was super simple. 50 tech people to build a messaging system is actually a lot.

Tell that to Twitter. Whatsapp staying at 50 instead of growing to 5000 is impressive.

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Re:WhatsApp scaled to 1B users with only 50 engineers by that_guy_iain on Monday October 25, 2021 @12:43PM (#28989952)
Different product. One is a social media network and one is a messaging app.
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Re:WhatsApp scaled to 1B users with only 50 engineers by relaxing on Monday October 25, 2021 @01:58PM (#28991005)
You say that now, but Twitter also began as a way to send a quick message to your friends.
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Re:WhatsApp scaled to 1B users with only 50 engineers by recursive on Monday October 25, 2021 @04:43PM (#28992878)
You used to be able to use it as a way to create a free self-managing SMS distribution list. Pretty cool, before I had phone with data capabilities.

That was even a use case I understood. Now I feel too old to understand how to use twitter. But that can't be it. Much older people seem to have no problem.

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Re:WhatsApp scaled to 1B users with only 50 engineers by that_guy_iain on Tuesday October 26, 2021 @04:49AM (#28997957)
Umm it quickly pivoted to being a social networking site. Before they even were trying to scale they were a social network, micro blogging site.
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Re:WhatsApp scaled to 1B users with only 50 engineers by EschatonCometh on Monday October 25, 2021 @07:08PM (#28994329)
But, it wasn't built to scale like WhatsApp.
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Re:WhatsApp scaled to 1B users with only 50 engineers by jokethrowaway on Monday October 25, 2021 @06:42PM (#28994081)
That's unfair, Twitter had to wrestle scaling with Rails while WhatsApp used Erlang which is a perfect match for scalable communications.
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