Requirements
Functional Requirements:
- Allow users to tweet messages up to 140 characters.
- Enable users to follow other users.
- Allow users to like tweets from other users.
- Display tweets from followed users in the home feed.
- Show top K popular tweets in the home feed based on likes and followers.
Non-Functional Requirements:
- High Availability: This requirement ensures that the system is operational and accessible at all times. For Twitter, high availability means minimizing downtime, which is crucial for user engagement. You should focus on redundancy and failover mechanisms to ensure continuous service.
- Fast Response: Users expect quick interactions, such as loading tweets or following users. Fast response times enhance user experience and retention. You should consider caching strategies and efficient data retrieval methods to meet this requirement.
- Scalability: As Twitter grows, the system must handle increased loads without performance degradation. This involves designing for both horizontal and vertical scaling. You should focus on partitioning strategies for data storage and load balancing to accommodate spikes in traffic, especially during viral events.
API Design
Define the APIs expected from the system. This is your chance to analyze and define the read and write paths so that you can come up with the high-level design...
High-Level Design
Describe the overall system architecture. Identify the main components needed to solve the problem end-to-end. Use the diagramming tool to create a block diagram.
Detailed Component Design
Deep dive into 2-3 key components. Explain how they work, how they scale, discuss tradeoffs, capacity, and any relevant algorithms or data structures.