Whenever I see headlines like these, "X billion messages per day/hour/second in some web service Y", I wonder what the hell is that service doing that it generates so much messages? I.e. I could understand Facebook, with its billion+ of users and built-in messaging platform, could generate billion of "messages" a day. But a mostly read-based service like Yelp?
But I finally realized - those messages are probably mostly tracking, ads, more tracking, some infrastructure work and even more ads & tracking. The sausage machine that turns people into money.
Indeed. I'm working in adtech and we get four billion requests for bids per day (more on Black Friday and the holiday season). Add in the ad serving and processing of all the results and it blows up fast.
But I finally realized - those messages are probably mostly tracking, ads, more tracking, some infrastructure work and even more ads & tracking. The sausage machine that turns people into money.