Database implementation for applications like instagram

Question

I am wondering how applications like Snapchat and instagram store images and user records in a database.

Say I have a user table, how would they maintain a list of followers for each user? Whether they save a list of subscribers for each record in a user table or create a separate table for a subsequent event and record every time someone follows someone.

Also, for storing images, I assume that they will unload images in the mass storage server space and store the URL in tables. Is there a better way to implement this? If not, which storage server will they work on? Dedicated or shared servers?

Thanks.

Answer 1

You should read the Instagram Engineering post at tumblr. This will let you know about the technology stack.

And this will also help overall.