With the explosive growth of the internet over the past decade, nothing has taken center stage like social media. Its growth has enabled online games, activities and tools to provide a platform for us to share our experiences with others and stay connected to friends and loved ones on our journey through life. While these experiences are fun and fulfilling for end users, a renaissance of rapid technological innovation behind the scenes has helped to make it all possible.
The first iteration of the internet faced fundamental challenges in enabling websites to support millions of visitors. The challenge with web 2.0 was to convert the static internet into a rich interactive experience — not only accessible via computers, but mobile devices, tablets and a wide range of new devices.
One of the key attributes of modern web applications is the ability to maintain a smooth user experience on the front end while new features and capabilities are being introduced on the back end. While users explore cool new features in their online experiences, engineers and computer scientists work behind the scenes to create new innovations at an amazing pace.
MeetMe.com has been at the forefront of the growth of social media, developing key innovations and new highly scalable architectures that have broken through yesterday’s limitations to create new applications for over 90 million users.
The technical challenges MeetMe has faced to deliver their award-winning services are nothing short of amazing. Consider the task: start from a small base of users and face explosive user growth to over 90 million users — with no downtime and no service interruptions allowed. While you’re at it, deliver a continuous stream of applications that deliver powerful user experiences and stand out from the crowd in one of the most competitive industries on earth.
MeetMe has been an innovator in breaking through technological barriers, and Dell Networking has been a key partner in helping to deliver the new network technologies they need to meet the extreme demands placed on MeetMe’s infrastructure.
This has become much deeper than a traditional buyer/seller relationship. Creating breakthrough solutions requires Dell and MeetMe engineers to work in tandem. For MeetMe, this relationship helps them to get the new features they need to keep breaking down barriers before the competition. For Dell, supporting MeetMe’s extremely innovative infrastructure helps us to understand the latest in new web application technology and user demands to keep our products ahead of the curve.
Jeremy Stinson, MeetMe’s VP of network operations has been with them from the very beginning, playing a core role in developing their innovative infrastructure from the ground up. In this interview, Jeremy recounts some of the challenges MeetMe has faced with their explosive growth and how Dell Networking has been a key partner in delivering groundbreaking products with the efficiency, performance and stability that has helped MeetMe grow to become the world’s largest social discovery site.