“Instagration.”
That’s Facebook’s term for the live migration of Instagram — all of Instagram – from Amazon’s servers to a Facebook data center. The firm shared yesterday that it completed the transition without so much as a whisper to Instagram’s 200 million active users.
Planning the secret transition took “about a year,” according to Wired, and it was handled by a small team of just eight engineers at first. The actual migration took just one month, led by a 20-person team.
According to Instagram founder founder Mike Krieger, the transition required Instagram to first move from Amazon’s EC2 cloud computing service to Amazon’s Virtual Private Cloud. VPC enabled Krieger to “create a logical network that reached beyond Amazon into the Facebook data centre,” Wired reports.
The migration was completed in April, but Facebook claims it will keep Instagram’s user data siloed to protect the privacy of Instagram users. This suggests that your behavior on Instagram won’t influence Facebook’s aggressive tracking efforts, even if ads will eventually play a big role on Instagram.
Looking back, it didn’t take long for Instagram to start mirroring Facebook. As soon as Instagram debuted Web profiles, Facebook’s influence was clear.
But now, Instagram is firmly in Facebook’s DNA.
Facebook is the world's largest social network, with over 1.15 billion monthly active users. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It was a huge hit: in 2 w... read more »
