Social Media News Feed
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Social Media News Feed
Design the news feed system for a social media platform like Twitter or Instagram. Functional Requirements: - Users can create posts (text, images, videos) - Users see a feed of posts from people they follow - Feed is ranked by relevance (not just chronological) - Support for likes, comments, and shares - Real-time feed updates when new posts are created Non-Functional Requirements: - Feed generation should be fast (< 200ms) - Support for celebrities with millions of followers - Eventually consistent (new posts appear within seconds) Scale: - 500M users, average 200 follows each - 1M new posts per day - Feed is the most accessed feature (~10B feed loads/day)
Examples
How would you handle trending/viral posts that should appear in many feeds?
Approach hint
The key decision is WHEN to build the feed: when a post is created (push) or when a user opens their feed (pull)?
Common mistake
Skipping assumptions, edge cases, or trade-offs can make an otherwise good answer feel incomplete.