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Written on 2nd March 2009
4 COMMENTS 
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
TwitterCounter is growing fast and is taking more and more of our time. We try to keep up with Twitter as it grows and becomes a mainstream media company. Arjen recently did an interview with a Dutch blog about the technology behind TwitterRemote with some interesting stats which I thought would be nice to share with you here too.
Currently our whole infrastructure consists of just one server at SliceHost which was tuned to give us as much performance as possible. We used to host TwitterCounter in Europe but because it has to talk to the Twitter API a lot we decided to move everything to the US. This turned out to be a very good decision as the connection time to Twitter is three times faster from the US than Europe which saving us 40 hours of waiting time a day.
Our server often handles more than 200 mysql queries per second. The database contains more than 700 million records and takes up 45 gigabytes. Our biggest challenge is updating every account, every day. With more than 1.5 million unique user accounts that need to be updated every 24 hours we would need to get the information for 62500 accounts every hour to get everything updated every hour. Previously we used to query the Twitter API more than 300 thousand times an hour. That worked fine for us until Twitter decided to limit the number of requests per hour to 20.000.
If we would do 20.000 request per hour we could only update 480.000 of our accounts. Less than a third of what we needed! We spent a lot of time analyzing the API and have come up with a way to update more than 200.000 accounts, per hour, without exceeding our API limits. That means we can track up to 5 million unique Twitter users with our current technology.
Arjen Schat, the co-founder and lead developer at TwitterCounter, came up with some pretty revolutionary technology, tricks and solutions which he will share with the audience at the upcoming Kings of Code conference in Amsterdam in a few months.
Since mid february we are generating more than 3 million TwitterCounter buttons every 24 hours and we can only see that number growing. With TwitterRemote now live and more and more bloggers joining Twitter we expect to generate close to 15 million buttons per day before the end of the year.
Last year Twitter reportedly grew 800%. TwitterCounter has been live for a little more than 6 months now. We enjoy working on it immensely and plan to keep innovating and adding interesting stats to it on a daily basis. Right now the service is generating some modest revenue, enough to pay for hosting and some office space. We expect to add more revenue generating services soon which I will talk about in a follow-up post soon.
Written on 17th June 2008
2 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz has just talked about a new project called Solaris Registration Map. It’s an early access Google Maps mash-up of Solaris 10 and Open Solaris instances that activated Sun Connection to receive automatic software updates. Schwartz told the Supernova attendees that the mash-up informed them where their customers hang out.
When zoomed out, the results aren’t that surprising. The areas with a high density of Sun sign-ups are Europe, the urban areas of the U.S. and Asia, and the East coast of Australia. But when you’re zooming in, you can tell exactly where the Sun users are. Here are the Sun fan boys from London for example:
So as you can tell by the title of this post, Schwartz has also revealed why they’ve acquired MySQL. When I interviewed MySQL CEO Marten Mickos right after the acquisition last January, he told me that “Sun didn’t have a database and we knew we could fit that role perfectly”. So that’s one reason. Schwartz added another one this afternoon: “Because MySQL adds 100,000 dots to the map a day”.
Written on 22nd January 2008
1 COMMENT
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Last week we reported that Sun Microsystems will acquire MySQL - the open-source database system that fuels a lot of sites – for 1 billion dollars. CEO of Sun Jonathan Schwartz wrote an insightful post on how the deal took place and why they were interested in the database system giant. Turns out that MySQL’s CEO Marten Mickos wasn’t interested for a long while:
For nearly five years, I’ve been getting together for dinner with Marten Mickos, MySQL’s CEO, catching up on the industry, chatting about trends and business models, and just as the dessert was about to be served… I’d say, “geez, we have so much in common, Marten, we see the world so similarly, what would you think about becoming a part of Sun?” At which point Marten would say he was flattered and honored, pour some milk into his coffee, stir, and start talking about Finland.
Mickos and Schwartz
So why did MySQL decided that they DID want to think about an acquisition? We asked Marten Mickos himself:
“There were a number of reasons. But firstly, we were not looking for an acquiror – we were going full steam towards an IPO. What made us stop and think and discuss with Sun initially was that they have a brilliant CEO whom we respect highly and who is changing the strategy of the company. Under Jonathan’s leadership, Sun has opensourced more products than any other company. They also have started to partner with companies that traditionally were seen as their competitors. This is such a fresh – and winning – approach that it caught our attention.”
So the five years dinners and the good talks payed off. What else, next to the strategy of Schwartz, made MySQL decide to shake hands on it?
“Well, beyond that, there was a long list of benefits. Sun is focused on innovation and technology, and so are we. Sun targets the global web economy as their market, and so do we. And there are more reasons. Importantly Sun didn’t have a database and we knew we could fit that role perfectly. And to our delight, their corporate culture matches well with ours.”
Alright, that’s all made clear: the deal is a gift from heaven for both companies. Yet, what will it mean for the users of MySQL?
“MySQL will have the same roadmap and strategy, but faster ramp. We have a clear plan for 2008 which we will continue to follow as before. But over time, there will be product improvements that stem from our cooperation with the various product and technology labs of Sun. There will be a much bigger sales force selling MySQL. There will be a more complete support network. And so on.”
I think I can easily state that MySQL and Sun is already THE corporate love story of 2008. And better yet, with a dowry of 1 billion dollars. Marten and his team must have had a great party, right?
Our secret code name for Sun Microsystems during the negotiation was ‘Heineken’
“Funnily, not much yet. I think we will celebrate more once the deal finally closes in a month or two.The deal got done on a Tuesday and on Wednesday our all-company meeting started, so we were all very busy and we continue to be so. We did get together in my hotel room and opened a bottle of champagne on the eve of the announcement. But we actually drank more beer, and more specifically Heineken. This was because our secret code name for Sun Microsystems during the negotiation was ‘Heineken’.”
Written on 16th January 2008
8 COMMENTS
Robert Gaal, co-founder of Wakoopa
This just hit the presses: Sun will acquire MySQL for $1 billion. If you’re not familiar with MySQL: it’s the open-source database system that fuels a lot of sites, including Facebook, Google, and this one. From the press release:
SANTA CLARA, CA January 16, 2008 Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: JAVA) today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire MySQL AB, an open source icon and developer of one of the world’s fastest growing open source databases for approximately $1 billion in total consideration. The acquisition accelerates Sun’s position in enterprise IT to now include the $15 billion database market. Today’s announcement reaffirms Sun’s position as the leading provider of platforms for the Web economy and its role as the largest commercial open source contributor.
Will this change MySQL as we know it? Mårten Mickos, MySQL CEO, says the culture of the company (mainly open-source minded) will stay the same:
Marten Mickos with The Next Web founders
“Sun’s culture and business model complements MySQL’s own by sharing the same ideals that we have had since our foundation — software freedom, online innovation and community and partner participation. We are tremendously excited to work with Sun and the millions of members of the MySQL open source ecosystem to continue to deliver the best database for powering the modern Web economy.”
Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz also elaborates on his blog.
We’ve had the pleasure of having dinner with Mårten in Amsterdam a few months back. We’ll try and contact him ASAP for a short interview regarding this news. Congratulations Mårten!
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show off, the future of the Web. (More info 
