Comments on: Why Facebook is so slow

By: mart kyr

mart kyr — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 23:57:34 +0000

you dont know much do you?

the reason facebook is so slow has nothing at all to do with the load on the servers, the reason its so slow is the fact that the applications that runs on it are coded terrible, and completly hammer your browser using more ram and more cpu cycles…

load a freshly made profile on facebook, it will load in miliseconds, load a popular persons profile, who has lots of friends and lots os stupid applications installed on there profile, it will take for ever to load.. but while your waiting, hit ctrl alt and del and check out how much cpu and ram usage your browsers executable file (firefox.exe or iexplorer.exe) is using.. 100%

you know nothing about web servers

By: admin

admin — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 00:32:44 +0000

I know more than the average person about web servers. But, I admit there is a lot that i don’t know. If you are implying that updating information is not more intensive than reading information then I guess I know more than you about databases.

The number of applications on facebook could well be another reason why it runs slowly - so no argument with you there.

The main point of the post, therefore, still stands true - it is not very surprising that facebook is slow.

By: annoyed user

annoyed user — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 21:29:03 +0000

Its annoying either way, I would have thought that due to its high popularity the Facebook guys would have got themselves a few extra servers to handle the strain… that and regulated the stupid Apps that keep popping up… or maybe just get rid of the 3rd party ones?

By: Hintswen

Hintswen — Mon, 26 May 2008 02:54:40 +0000

to annoyed user

You realize that most of the apps are 3rd party?
Have you ever looked at the list of apps that are not 3rd party?
It’s basically the few that are installed automatically when you make your account and about 20 more.

By: wtf-er

wtf-er — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 11:58:36 +0000

why the hell did you compare facebook with google searching?

google has an index, facebook is another story.. it might have its own index, but it has to be a heavier index… google simply has URLs and sitemaps..

By: Wayne M

Wayne M — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 05:29:27 +0000

Facebook runs pretty good for how many requests it gets per minute. I know my computer is stupid fast and my cpu will max out on one of the cores from certain profiles, *(Tara get rid of all that crap :D ) but that doesn’t mean anything when the status bar is “waiting for page” for about 30 seconds.

I do understand what is “working” in the background of facebook and if you want to see your computer do the same thing, open up a search and look for ever *.ini file on your computer while you open MSPAINT and do a bucket fill with red on a file that is 40000×30000 pixels and try to open up your documents folder, see how long that takes on your 1000 dollar machine and imagine facebook is doing millions of millions of things like that per second and still doing it well 24hrs a day for a growing interconnecting everchanging mass of people.

It’s great that we have these FREE services and no complain that there is a longer delay than usual. If you want to feel the real lag try dialing up to it :D

Wayne M

By: admin

admin — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 12:40:31 +0000

Re:”why the hell did you compare facebook with google searching?”
I was pre-empting the question “If Google can present a zillion search results in milliseconds, why does Facebook take so long to display a pretty profile?”
Answer: Yes, facebook is another story completely

By: Evgeny

Evgeny — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:33:35 +0000

You can’t expect facebook to load fast, because your browser makes about 100 requests for every page on facebook. Mostly because they have small javascript files and small stylesheet files that they dont concatenate into one bigger/versioned one … and that makes your browser to fetch each one separately. Each fetch like that makes the process very painfully slow. Does not really have much to do with the load on their server, considering the awful way they serve their pages - they are coping okay so far.

By: steve

steve — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 23:13:02 +0000

The multitude of css and javascript files are not from Facebook - they are from the thousands of poorly structured ad sites that are embedded into the pages - please facebook, only accept ads from sites with responsive servers.

By: network geek

network geek — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 20:48:47 +0000

This pdf slideshow explains how the scaling solutions differ between ‘read sites’ and ‘write sites’ in the data persistence layer.

http://www.cs.ait.ac.th/~mdailey/courseware/index.php?action=getlecture&course_id=6&lecture_id=8

note the bit where its says….

..Computation scaling strategies..
..This means vertical scaling is best for the persistence layer in
applications with a high transaction volume…
…Vertical scaling replaces a single box with a bigger more expensive
single box (more CPUs, disks, etc.)..

Therefore, (accorsing to this) sites like facebook have to either spend lots of money to keep up with exapnsion or come up with genius ideas to circumvent the problems.

By: Why?

Why? — Wed, 20 May 2009 19:38:45 +0000

Why is everyone so ‘argumentative’ in the first place? Admin, I give you credit for keeping your cool dispite ignorance!

By: Hilliardman

Hilliardman — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 18:01:47 +0000

Its the spam they are trying to load on each screen.

By: Matt Leger

Matt Leger — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 14:41:52 +0000

I think people arguing on the internet msg boards is possibly the most useless activity one can do. Unless someone learns something.

By: admin

admin — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 10:26:52 +0000

@ Why? - Thanks for the ‘keeping your cool’ support. But, I think that the tone of the post was a little bit inciteful so I see why it beckoned a blasting from the masses. I can handle it ;o)

@Matt - Yes, you are right. If you look at the rest of my blog there are hardly any comments…i guess its because i rarely incite controversy. Any blogger/web author, has to admit that they secretly thrive on comments, (good or bad …as long as its not spam). It reminds me of the Argument Sketch from Monty Python : http://www.mindspring.com/~mfpatton/sketch.htm

By: Charlotte

Charlotte — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 22:53:02 +0000

WHAt s that banskyfied google home page all about johnnie walker….it concerns me greatly, i might just have to take you up on the offer of a bit of up the avon in a bristol b&b, all expenses paid. bless you. x

By: Laura

Laura — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 14:47:29 +0000

I think you’ll find Facebook is slow because of all these reasons! The ads they show are running all sorts of scripts which slows down the performance of Facebook. The servers probably cant hack all the updating and data retrieval as much as other sites and also Facebook is coded in PHP as well as being badly coded! This probably isnt doing anyone any favours, they need to re-code the whole darn site into ASP.net or something. Still we should be grateful it runs at all.

By: Bobby

Bobby — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 01:25:51 +0000

Uhhhh…how much does Facebook cost you? Exactly… Just be glad it is a free service. Stop uploading 10 million pictures of you flashing the peace sign and stop playing with your your Mafia, Farm, Fish, Dog,…apps. Too much unnecessary activity slows it down, so deal with it. I can’t even imagine how crazy the database back end gets when everyone and their mother is doing crazy stuff on FB.

By: bobocat

bobocat — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 00:50:10 +0000

Oh my god Bobby exactly my sentiments!!!!