Where/How are you hosting your Facebook App?
10 comments
yeah, if hosting is a big problem for you, and you're legitimately optimized right, then email about anyone in the valley -- you can get a bridge loan (convertible note) for $20k - $50k in no time (less than 5 days). if you don't know anybody, email me. go to any investor and say "I need money because my site is growing too fast!" and you're solid. end result: hosting is not actually a problem (even though it looks like one), but making a popular app is much more of a problem.
This is a hard problem.
If your app isn't successful then there's nothing to worry about.
But what if your app is super successful? How would you ever be able to secure enough servers to meet the demand without burning a very deep hole in your pocket?
What we need is a Y-Combinator like incubator for Facebook Apps - a company which will host your app and help you scale it up for a chunk of equity.
If your app isn't successful then there's nothing to worry about.
But what if your app is super successful? How would you ever be able to secure enough servers to meet the demand without burning a very deep hole in your pocket?
What we need is a Y-Combinator like incubator for Facebook Apps - a company which will host your app and help you scale it up for a chunk of equity.
I don't think it would be smart to include hosting in an incubator. We made a conscious choice not to.
(a) Economically hosting is a commodity. It's not an area where we can add any special value. We don't do hosting for the same reason we don't supply office or living space: it's better for founders just to buy these on the open market.
(b) Hosting is a technical problem, which it's good for founders to have to solve. We're happy to deal with all the paperwork of incorporation, because you really don't have to know about that stuff to run a company. (I haven't read half our legal documents myself.) But startups do have to understand how to manage servers.
(a) Economically hosting is a commodity. It's not an area where we can add any special value. We don't do hosting for the same reason we don't supply office or living space: it's better for founders just to buy these on the open market.
(b) Hosting is a technical problem, which it's good for founders to have to solve. We're happy to deal with all the paperwork of incorporation, because you really don't have to know about that stuff to run a company. (I haven't read half our legal documents myself.) But startups do have to understand how to manage servers.
I think EC2 ( http://aws.amazon.com/ec2 ) is a pretty good way to go but I'm interested in what others are thinking.
EC2 is not suitable for most Web applications:
- You don't get a static IP address, so if your instance fails and needs to reboot, you might end up with a different IP address.
- If your instance fails, it also loses all the data stored in it.
- There is no hardware load balancing.
With that said, you can probably use it to complement your other servers by doing some of the batch processing.
- You don't get a static IP address, so if your instance fails and needs to reboot, you might end up with a different IP address.
- If your instance fails, it also loses all the data stored in it.
- There is no hardware load balancing.
With that said, you can probably use it to complement your other servers by doing some of the batch processing.
If your site gets big, ask someone to host it for you (30boxes hosted one of the most popular apps). You can sell it to RockYou or Slide if it gets too popular. IMO, not a real concern, and when you reach this point, then you will think of some solution.
For now, worry about the real issue: "What is a problem that I can relate to and solve for Facebook users?"
For now, worry about the real issue: "What is a problem that I can relate to and solve for Facebook users?"
I'm using Slicehost. So far so good, although my app is small fry in the traffic stakes.
My company loaned servers to one of the top 10 Facebook apps for a few weeks as their app grew to over 3.5MM users.
The hardware: Two modestly equipped boxes from ServerBeach.com -- and it ran super smooth.
The hardware: Two modestly equipped boxes from ServerBeach.com -- and it ran super smooth.
A VPS at the moment, while it's still being developed.
Unless you have a media intensive application (ex: video, music, etc...), hosting isn't really that bad. I would venture to guess apps like "X Me" and "SuperPoke" would do with a single powerful dedicated server, since theres really not much going on. Also, Facebook hosts the images on any profile, so any bandwidth there is only needed until their proxy server picks up the image.