Who’s Running On AWS – Twitter
Remember back in the early 2000s, when life much simpler? Everyone was just getting over the whole Y2K hump and just happy that the digital world didn’t implode when the clock struck midnight at the turn of the century. Perhaps, the panic of the millennium is what made some companies start to think differently. That’s around the same time that the e-commerce giant (Amazon) we all lovingly invite into our homes began building what is now the world’s largest cloud storage infrastructure. Over 20 years later, Amazon Web Services or more commonly referred to as AWS, is still ahead of the pack.
Welcome to our very first segment of “Who’s running on AWS”. Think of it as an insider scoop as we feature a new business every month and take a deep dive into the why and how behind their relationship with AWS. Join us as we take a figurative rock hammer and chisel away at the details like were escaping from Shawshank. The end goal is to come out on the other side with a little more knowledge than when we started.
Twitter is the company we will feature in our first segment of “Who’s running on AWS”. You’re probably wondering, how’d they get so lucky? The funny thing is, we’re thinking the same thing. Most people know Twitter as the real-time social media platform that tends to act more like a stage at the Grammy’s for celebrities to voice their opinions and publicly feud with other “tweeters”. Former President Donald Trump used the platform to speak directly to the people, even though not everyone was a fan of what he had to say. Covfefe anyone? But let’s be real, Twitter is more than that. Twitter is MUCH more than that. Introduced to the world in 2006, the microblogging and social media giant has grown more than anyone thought it would. Probably even more than Zuckerberg thought it would when he tried to purchase it in 2008. That’s a topic for another day though.
The amount of data growth that comes with being a billion-dollar corporation isn’t always easy to manage. That’s why the real-time social messaging platform decided to take its talents to AWS, signing a multi-year agreement to run its messaging timelines. So, what does that mean exactly? We’ll get to that in a sec.
Cloud computing is out of this world! Read how humans are taking the cloud to space!
Twitter’s tango with AWS marks the first time that they’re using the public cloud to exponentially grow their real-time service. They plan on using AWS’s capabilities in computing, archiving, data storage, and security, to deliver their real-time service with the lowest latency. In the meantime, Twitter will continue to develop and deploy new features to improve how people use its service. New features you say? We’ll believe it when we see it.
Twitter is using this alliance to grow and improve upon its platform by taking advantage of AWS’s network of data centers. The partnership with AWS will enrich the performance of Twitter users by allowing them to serve tweets from data centers closer to their customers, while also leveraging the Arm-based architecture of AWS Graviton2 instances.
Millions of people and organizations around the world use Twitter to share and respond to what’s happening at the current moment. Twitter will leverage AWS infrastructure and services to continue improving performance and security for them. Twitter and AWS will work together to create an architecture that increases Twitter’s on-premises infrastructure, allowing them to flawlessly run and scale the real-time service, increase its reliability using AWS’s fault-tolerant infrastructure, and quickly move new features into production.
The underground data center, a deeper look into the mystery.
Twitter will take advantage of AWS Graviton2-based instances on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) to power its cloud-based workloads, and use AWS container services to develop and deploy new features and applications consistently across its hybrid infrastructure. Twitter will also continue to use AWS services such as Amazon CloudFront (AWS’s fast content delivery network service that securely delivers data, videos, applications, and APIs with low latency and high transfer speeds to customers globally) and Amazon DynamoDB (AWS’s key-value database that delivers single-digit millisecond performance at any scale).
By relying on AWS infrastructure and services for its real-time workloads, Twitter will be able to scale its global footprint up and down without ever compromising the experience of its users. AWS container services will assist Twitter in creating a seamless hybrid on-premises and cloud environment, allowing them to innovate and deliver new experiences quickly and efficiently.
Imagine this Twitter and AWS deal like the super team of social media. With all this hype, Twitter should be able to take it to the next level. Who knows, maybe they’ll even give us more than a 280 character limit to get our messages across. The bottom line is, Twitter isn’t going anywhere. They’re only going to get bigger, creating more and more data along the way. It’s on AWS to make the growing platform run efficiently and archive all those tweets. The ball is in your court AWS! All the Kanyes, Taylor Swifts, Kevin Durants, and Justin Bieber’s are counting on you! I would include Donald Trump on that list too, but… well, you know. All joking aside, we hope you enjoyed this quick trip into the magical land known as AWS. Join us next time as we uncover another company and how AWS is helping them manage their data.
