Facebook chat is developed in Erlang

Posted by Mickaël Rémond on May 18, 2008

Facebook recently announced that their chat system is based on Erlang code running on a large cluster. It confirms that Erlang is a key tool for building large scale applications, especially for social networks.

Like ProcessOne has used Erlang to build its Instant Messaging suite of tools, Facebook is using Erlang to build its web based chat infrastructure.

The system uses a Comet based programming approach. From our knowledge the system uses Mochiweb as its web server to handle the massive number of long polling connections.

More details are available from Facebook engineering blog.



Categories: Jabber / XMPP  Erlang  
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Comments

anonymous avatar

interesting…

why Mochiweb and not YAws ?

Posted by llathieyre on 18 May 2008 at 14:33



 
Mickaël Rémond's avatar

I think they might use Mochiweb because it is lighter. As it has less features it can be easier to tune it and customize it for their own needs.

Posted by Mickaël Rémond on 18 May 2008 at 14:36



 
anonymous avatar

mochiweb also because of the better support for long lived http connections that suit comet (push-pull), which has inspired projects like erlycomet ( that used dojo + mochiweb )

Keep Clicking,
~B

Posted by Bhasker V Kode on 19 May 2008 at 13:22



 
anonymous avatar

This is the first I’ve heard that they’re using mochiweb, but from the HTTP headers it looks like they are. They’ve definitely slightly modified the source though:

Server: MochiWeb/1.0 (I’m not even supposed to be here today.)

Posted by Bob Ippolito on 20 May 2008 at 15:15



 
anonymous avatar

Good to see the monster Facebook uses open-source technologies!

In the facebook case, there is nothing about Jabber/XMPP, isnit?

Posted by Tom on 10 Feb 2010 at 22:27



 
anonymous avatar

Tom, they don’t use open-source technologies, they use technologies and that’s it: they pick the one that fits best, if it’s open, great, if it’s not… great too.

Facebook is too big and too important to dwell on ridiculous ideologies, they need to get shit done and that’s it.

Posted by Steven on 11 Aug 2010 at 17:12



 


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