Photo and video sharing platform on Azure with Blob Storage, CDN delivery, feed generation, stories, and Computer Vision image processing.
Difficulty: intermediate
Tags: social-media, image-processing, feed, cdn, azure
Instagram processes hundreds of millions of photo and video uploads daily, each requiring multiple resize operations, filter application, and CDN distribution. This Azure-native architecture separates the upload pipeline (receive → process → store multiple sizes) from the feed pipeline (aggregate → rank → serve). Azure SQL manages follower relationships, while a stories subsystem handles ephemeral 24-hour content with Cosmos DB TTL-based expiry.