TweetMeme

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Since its public launch at the beginning of 2009, TweetMeme has become one of the most popular Web 2.0 sites in the world. Like so many successful Web ventures, the company’s service is simple. The Web site uses custom-made software to count the number of links posted on Twitter, the popular micro-blogging service. TweetMeme then categorizes links according to subject matter or format, and lists the most popular ones. Visitors to the site can link straight to this content and cast their own votes by “retweeting” the original message.

The company’s business model is based on three lines of sponsorship. Businesses or individuals can pay to promote one tweet per day into the news stream, sponsor their own channel dedicated to a specific topic, or pay on a CPM (cost per thousands of impressions) basis.

Originally called fav.or.it and launched in 2006, the Web site offered an innovative take on blog subscriptions and comments. But as Twitter became the channel of choice for individuals and organizations to broadcast news, the company swiftly reinvented itself to monitor and aggregate this new real-time content.

TweetMeme has always used open-source software. It runs the Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system, Apache HTTP Server software, and MySQL database. It has also worked closely with Sun since its launch, taking advantage of the Sun Startup Essentials program for support, discounts on hardware, and specialist advice. Nick Halstead, founder of TweetMeme says, “The open-source model is a great approach for a startup business, but it needs an experienced technology partner for day-to-day support and to manage potentially-explosive growth. Sun gave us the support we needed and more from day one.”

Growth is the critical word when it comes to TweetMeme. fav.or.it succeeded in attracting some 200,000 users over a number of months, but by the middle of 2009, TweetMeme was experiencing 85% month-on-month growth in unique visitors.

Says Halstead, “First and foremost, it’s vital to deliver near 100% availability to end users and sponsors. Downtime has the potential to break a social media business.”

Fortunately, the Sun Startup Essentials program has evolved to keep pace with the fast-moving social media industry and stepped in to support Halstead’s new venture. To ensure that TweetMeme could scale to meet the needs of its global user base, the Sun team migrated TweetMeme to MySQL Enterprise, deployed on 10 Sun servers, a mixture of Sun Fire X4440 servers and Sun Fire X4150 Servers.

The MySQL Enterprise subscription also includes expert technical support for the database, as well as advanced database monitoring tools - which enable Halstead’s team to optimize performance and maximize uptime. “We didn’t want to abandon the open-source infrastructure, but we needed to scale out our hardware and software as quickly as possible. Sun helped us to meet this target with minimum fuss,” says Halstead.

There are several features that make MySQL Enterprise a great choice for TweetMeme. Halstead says, “The MySQL Enterprise Monitor assesses the performance of servers nonstop and alerts our engineers to potential problems before they can have an impact on the business.” He also highlights the importance of MySQL Query Analyzer, which continuously monitors query performance so that engineers can quickly find and fix problem SQL code during active development.. “This was essential to our survival during the past six months,” says Halstead. “Nothing is static in our business, so being able to tune the database engine of our organization in the midst of rapid growth is priceless,” he says.

The new hardware is also delivering impressive results. Halstead says: “The Sun Fire X4440 servers help us reduce IT costs through simpler maintenance and reduced power consumption, while offering outstanding availability and utilization.” The performance of the new technology and the support from the Sun team have also helped keep costs down. “We have just one full-time administrator for our systems because we know that the additional support is always there on the rare occasion that we need it,” says Halstead.

As for the site itself, the numbers are dramatic. TweetMeme is now analyzing, categorizing, and indexing more than 50,000 links per hour while handling 600 million retweets per month. In addition, third-party Web sites can include the TweetMeme retweet button on their own Web site. Tens of thousands of sites have taken advantage of this feature, including leading technology news sites such as Mashable and Techcrunch. “We’ve made it as simple as possible for the majority of Web pages, emails, and other online content to include the retweet button. Visitors to these pages can now post the link on Twitter at a click of a mouse.”

Most importantly, TweetMeme can continue to expand, using a proven database that will scale to meet any level of exponential growth in the future. “The combination of Sun hardware and MySQL Enterprise is a powerful business platform that simplifies infrastructure management,” says Halstead. “This is of paramount importance for a fast-moving business with a small team of people. Things move so quickly in this industry that you can’t afford any distractions. But thanks to Sun, we can now focus on strategy rather than on technology.”