I started by clarifying the requirements for the news feed, like what type of content users want to see and how to prioritize it. The interviewer appreciated my focus on user preference and suggested including a real-time ranking algorithm to push trending news.

I described a feed that aggregates various sources and employs machine learning to tailor content. However, I struggled when asked about scaling the system for millions of users, leading to a lengthy discussion about sharding and partitioning, which I hadn’t fully prepared for.

The interviewer seemed pleased overall but pointed out my gaps in scalability knowledge.