

Ask YC: Concurrent vs. Registered User Ratio? - bsaunder

Does anyone have any numbers they could share on the number of registered users (or active ones), vs the number concurrently using the system at peak times.  I'm trying to estimate the size of the production systems I will need.
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t-dub
I think that this is somewhat dependent on the _sort_ of site you're looking
at. Total user engagement and usage patterns are going to be different on a
news site is going to be different than on a social networking site.

In any case, on a fledgling social media (i.e. focus on sharing/remixing
audio/video/images) that I built for a client, the current user registration
is just shy of 2,000. The number of users who have posted _anything_ is ~700.
The number of users who have posted in the last 30 days is ~350. The number of
users who have posted 3 or more items in the last 30 days is ~100. The number
of users who have commented on a post in the last 30 days is ~150.

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xirium
> usage patterns

Session duration will greatly influence concurrent usage. If people use your
service for less than five minutes per day then 100 daily users would mostly
have the system to themselves. This means that you could have thousands of
registered users and grossly inefficient code without load issues.

Stop fretting about your hardware and get thousands of registered users.

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bsaunder
Thanks. I expect my sessions to be longer (30 minutes?). And if I were only
expecting hundreds of users, I wouldn't waste my time. I'm hoping to hit at
least tens of thousands of registered paying users. I do expect to have
portions of "grossly inefficient code" (much faster to implement in some
cases) initially that I plan on solving (when they become the problem to
solve). My product/site will be highly collaborative (I know, everyone thinks
this, but, I think my idea is different (I know, everyone thinks... ())) and
with a larger than normal communication component.

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izaidi
My site's still pretty small but I've got 1800 registered users, an upper
limit of around 300 active ones, and 10 to 15 using the site at peak times.

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sanswork
Most of the sites I've worked on top out at 1% of registered users online at
any given time.

