Shadowing Practice: System Design Mock Interview: Design Facebook Messenger - Learn English Speaking with Video

How would you design a real-time messaging app that can support millions of users?

In this video, we'll be talking about how to design and build an application like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Discord, or Slack.

We'll be talking about the high-level architecture of these systems, as well as some specific features like how to build real-time messaging,

group messaging, image and video uploads, as well as push notifications.

Now, we'll be talking about some best practices as well along the way about how to build and scale a reliable system.

Now before we dive into some specific features and components of our system,

let's talk a little bit about some of the high-level features and goals that we want to implement along the way.

Now, I think some important product goals that we want to support obviously are real-time messaging from one individual to another,

as well as group messaging that can support multiple users.

We want to support maybe something like an online status to show whether a user is currently online or offline,

as well as supporting image and video uploads in addition to text messages.

We also may want to support some extra bells and whistles like read receipts or push notifications, so we'll get to those if we have time.

And then we also want to keep in mind some technical goals and constraints here, so thinking about how to build a low latency system to support real-time messaging

and what applications or technologies we need to sort of choose to make that happen.

We also want to build something that can support a really high volume of requests.

So, you know, millions of users potentially writing messages at the same time.

We also want to make sure, of course, that our system is highly reliable and available.

And we also want to make sure that our messaging system is secure and doesn't, you know, result in users being sent messages they shouldn't receive.

Alright, great.

So now that we've laid out some of the features we want to support, let's Let's talk about the overall architecture of this app

and specifically let's talk about how we're going to send messages from one user to another.

So let's pretend we have two users here and we want to send a message between them.

So the reason we need to use a chat server application in this case is

because on the internet it's actually really hard to establish a direct connection from one user to another

and to make that connection reliable.

And in addition we also want to support things like storing and retrieving message histories later.

We need to have our chat server here in order to sort of establish

and broker this connection and to sort of store these messages so they can be retrieved from different devices later in time.

So I'm going to go ahead and draw in our chat API server.

And then we also need to sort of establish a connection from users to this chat server.

Now let's think about what happens when user A sends a message to user B.

What we want to happen is the user sends a message to the server

and the server relays that message instantly to the user that it's intended for.

However, this kind of breaks the model of how HTTP requests work on the internet because they can't actually be server initiated, they have to be client initiated.

So something about this isn't going to work and we're going to have to come up with something else.

Now I've got a few options in mind, so I'm going to talk about those and discuss their trade-offs.

The first one we can do is something called HTTP polling.

And in this model, instead of just sending one request to the server, we're going to sort of repeatedly ask the server if there's any new information available.

And so most of the time the server is going to reply with no, there's no new information available.

And then once in a while it'll say, hey, I received a new message for you, and it will reply with that.

For a variety of reasons, this is probably not the right solution for this problem, because it means we're going to be sending a lot of unnecessary requests to our server

and it also means that we're going to have pretty high latency.

So we're only going to be able to receive messages when we ask for them, not when they're actually received by the server.

Now, the second option we have is something called long polling.

And in this model, we're still using sort of a traditional HTTP request, but instead of resolving immediately with the result, we're actually going to have the server hold on to the request

and wait until data is available before it replies with the result.

So in this way, we sort of maintain an open connection with the server at all times.

And then once data is sent back, we immediately request a new connection and then we keep that open until data is available.

Now, this is a little bit better because it solves our latency problems somewhat

and we don't have to create all these unnecessary requests all the time.

However, we have to maintain this open connection, and

if there's lots of data coming from the server It means

we still have to initiate a new request to get the next piece of data

So while it's good for some systems like notifications and things like

that It's probably not the best for a real-time chat application like we're trying to build here

So the third option we have is something called WebSockets

And this is the solution I'm going to recommend because it was sort of designed for this application Now in WebSockets, we still maintain an open connection with the server,

but instead of being just a one-way connection, it's actually a full duplex connection.

So now we can send up data to the server, and the server can push down data to us, and this connection is maintained and kept open for the duration of the session.

So this architecture presents some unique challenges for us

because there's some practical limitations to how many open connections a server can have at one time.

WebSockets is built on the TCP protocol, which has about 16 bits for the port number.

This means there's a real limitation of about 65,000 connections that any one server can have open at a time.

So instead of having one API server, we're obviously going to need to have a lot of servers to handle all of these WebSocket connections.

And we're going to need a load balancer

or gateway sitting in front of them to help balance these connections and route them to the correct server.

So I'm going to go ahead and replace this with a load balancer, and I'm going to draw in some API servers here instead.

All right, great.

So I'm just sort of visualizing this with about three servers, but if we're trying to support millions or hundreds of millions of users

and we can only support thousands of requests per server, that means we're going to have hundreds or thousands of these servers serving requests and keeping these connections open.

So our system is going to have to reach a pretty massive scale here.

And in addition, we now have a new problem

because before we were able to sort of send a message from one user to another via our chat API server.

However, now we have a distributed system and we need to be able to communicate from one API server to another.

And in fact, we've actually created sort of another messaging problem here, because these API servers need to know how to talk to each other.

So one model we can adopt here, one design pattern we can use, is something like a PubSub message queue.

And so that fits nicely into this problem

because it's sort of a natural solution for a messaging problem between servers in a distributed system.

So I'm going to go ahead and draw in a message service here.

which is going to sort of implement this message queue.

And the idea here is that each API server will publish messages into this centralized queue

and subscribe to updates for the users that it's connected to.

That way when a new message comes in, it can be added to the queue

and any service that's sort of listening for messages for

that user can then receive that update and forward the message onto the user.

So that's how that would work.

Now we still need to think about how we're going to store and persist these messages

in our database and how to sort of model this relationship between messages and users.

So let's go ahead and draw in a database here and think about how that's going to work.

Now when we think about what kind of database to choose for application, let's think back to the beginning where we set out our requirements for the system.

So we know we want to support a really large volume of requests and store a lot of messages.

And we also care a lot about the availability and uptime of our service.

So we want to pick a database that's going to fit these requirements.

And we know from things like the CAP theorem

that there's going to be these sort of universal trade-offs between principles like consistency, availability, and ability to partition or shard our database.

And so we want to focus on this ability to shard and partition and keep our database available

rather than things like consistency, which are less important in a messaging application than they would be in something like a financial application.

So with that in mind, I think I would choose something like a NoSQL database that has sort of built-in replication and sharding ability.

So something like Cassandra or HBase would be great for this application.

100

All right, so now let's talk about how we're going to store and model this data in our database.

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We know we're going to need a few key tables and features like users, messages, and then we're also going to probably need this concept of conversations,

102

which will be groups of users who are supposed to receive messages.

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So I'm going to go ahead and draw those tables in.

104

So starting with the users table, we're going to have a unique ID for this user.

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We're also going to have something like a username or a name for them to display.

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And then we're probably also going to want to have something like a last active timestamp.

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And the idea here is this, this would allow us to support features like online status

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or being able to see when a user was last online

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and this would just be a simple timestamp that would be the date of their last activity.

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Alright, so next we're going to need a messages table

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and again this is going to have a unique ID

112

but it's also going to store a reference to the user who made the message

113

and we're also going to have a reference or an ID for the conversation that it belongs to.

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We'll talk more about that in a moment.

115

But then obviously at the end, we're also going to need the text of the message as well.

116

And if we want to support something like media uploads, like images or videos, we also want to store something like a media URL here in our database as well.

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This won't be the actual data, but it'll be the URL where the user can access this data to download it.

118

All right, so next we're going to need this conversations table that I was talking about.

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And the idea here is that this would simply just be an ID and perhaps something like a name.

120

So in the case of an application like Slack or Discord, this could be the channel name of the conversation.

121

So that's sort of an optional string that we could store here.

122

All right, great.

123

So the last thing we need is a way to query

124

and understand which users are part of a conversation and which conversations a user is part of.

125

So for that, I'm going to add one more table here that I'm going to call conversation users.

126

And it's just going to sort of mapping from a conversation ID to our user ID.

127

So the idea is that there'd be a row here for every user in a conversation.

128

And we'd be able to sort of index these in order to do queries like we were just talking about.

129

OK, great.

130

So now that we've talked about how we're going to store data in our database,

131

let's revisit our overall architecture for a moment and think about how we can make the system more scalable and more performant.

132

So in particular, one thing I'm thinking about is the cost of going to our database and retrieving messages from it repeatedly.

133

So one thing I'd like to add here is some sort of caching service or caching layer, which would be like a read through cache

134

that we can store in memory so

135

that we don't always have to go to our database and fetch messages from it directly.

136

So I'm just going to draw that in here.

137

Now, another thing we talked about but didn't really discuss very much is how we're going to store media,

138

So images and videos and how we can upload those to the correct place.

139

Now we're not going to store those in our database, but instead we're going to choose some sort of other storage platform like an object storage service like Amazon S3.

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So I'm going to go ahead and draw that in up here.

141

And the idea is that when our API receives a request to upload some sort of content, we'll actually just forward it onto this object storage system.

142

and then we'll store the URL of that object alongside our message as we discussed before.

143

On the user side when you receive a message

144

that contains some sort of media you'll then go and fetch that URL separately in order to download it.

145

Now in order to make

146

that more efficient we'll also want to add some sort of caching here

147

and in this case we would use something like a CDN

148

and the idea is that the user would request the resource from the CDN and if it's cached already, that's great.

149

And if it's not, the CDN would request that object from the object storage service in case there's a cache miss.

150

All right, great.

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Now the last thing we want to add here is some

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sort of way to notify users who are offline about messages they may have missed.

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So in this case, we might want to have some sort of notification service here

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that's also going to be be contacted by our message service in the event that the user is offline.

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So in this case, our message service will contact our notification service, and our notification service will forward that notification onto the user,

156

but probably via some sort of third-party API for iOS devices or Android devices, or perhaps even through some sort of mail service.

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All right, we've covered a lot of ground, and we've talked about everything from choosing the right network protocol

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for our clients to building a distributed messaging queue system in our back end

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and picking the right database and data model to store all these messages.

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I think with that we've covered pretty much everything we need to talk about.

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And while we could go more in depth on each of these topics, I think hopefully you have the big picture

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and the overview of how we would build this application

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and have learned some of the important technical decisions and trade-offs

164

that we need to be thinking about when we implement something like this.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This C1 speaking lesson is built on the video “System Design Mock Interview: Design Facebook Messenger”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: user, message, server, connection, request. This video has 164 sentences and 2722 words to shadow. The speech runs for 14:39. The speaker talks fast, about 186 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 87% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.

Key vocabulary in this video

The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
notification noun	/ˌnoʊtɪfɪˈkeɪʃn̩/	The act of notifying.
cache noun	/kæʃ/	Such a store of physical supplies, placed by humans or other animals for practical reasons.
queue noun	/kju/	A line of people, vehicles or other objects, usually one to be dealt with in sequence (i.e., the one at the front end is dealt with first, the one behind is…
upload verb	/ˈʌpˌloʊd/	To transfer data to a computer on a network, especially to a server on the Internet.
latency noun	/ˈleɪ.tən.si/	Concealment; the state of being latent; the state of being hidden.
shard noun	/ˈʃɑːd/	A piece of broken glass or pottery, especially one found in an archaeological dig.
retrieve verb	/ɹɪˈtɹiːv/	To regain or get back something.
offline adjective	/ɔfˈlaɪn/	Of a system, currently not connected (generally electrically) to a larger network. For example, a power plant which is not connected to the grid, or a computer…
initiate verb	/ɪˈnɪʃ.i.eɪt/	To begin; to start.
distribute verb	/dɪˈstɹɪbjuːt/	To divide into portions and dispense.
balancer noun	/ˈbæ.lən.sɚ/	One who, or that which, balances.
timestamp noun	/ˈtaɪmˌstæmp/	A variable containing the date and time at which an event occurred, often included in a log to track the sequence of events.
query noun	/ˈkwɪɹ.i/	A question, an inquiry (US), an enquiry (UK).
fetch verb	/fɛt͡ʃ/	To retrieve; to bear towards; to go and get.
partition noun	/pɑɹˈtɪ.ʃən/	An action which divides a thing into parts, or separates one thing from another.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
go ahead verb	/ˌɡoʊ əˈhɛd/	To proceed with; to begin.
come up with verb		To manage to produce, deliver, or present (something) by inventing, creating, thinking of, or obtaining it.
lay out verb	/ˌleɪ ˈaʊt/	To expend or contribute money to an expense or purchase.
push down verb		To force downwards (literally or figuratively).
read through verb		To thoroughly read something to check or proofread it.
send back verb		To return (something) to its origin.
send up verb		To imitate (someone or something) for the purpose of satirical humour.
set out verb	/ˈsɛt‿aʊt/	To explain something, or give exact details, usually in writing.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	being sent · can be retrieved · is sent
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	we've laid · we've actually created · we've talked
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	protocol, which has · consistency, which are

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 71 contractions and reduced forms, such as we're, I'm, we'll. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “sh” and “zh” sounds: notification /ˌnoʊtɪfɪˈkeɪʃn̩/, cache /kæʃ/, shard /ˈʃɑːd/, initiate /ɪˈnɪʃ.i.eɪt/, partition /pɑɹˈtɪ.ʃən/
Long words — get the stress right: notification /ˌnoʊtɪfɪˈkeɪʃn̩/, initiate /ɪˈnɪʃ.i.eɪt/, limitation /lɪmɪˈteɪʃən/, consistency /kənˈsɪs.tən.si/, replication /ɹɛplɪˈkeɪʃən/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like notification, cache, queue.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

Key vocabulary in this video

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Grammar in this video

Pronunciation to watch

How to practise with this video

What is the Shadowing Technique?