Beyond TikTok: Open Source at ByteDance

There I was, chilling with my iced black sesame latte, when I decided to peek behind the curtain of TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance. Little did I know, I was about to stumble upon some seriously cool Open Source projects that made me go, “Wait, ByteDance is into Open Source?!” Turns out, they’re doing more than just helping us perfect our dance moves—they’re contributing to the tech world in ways I never expected. Here are three things I learned that made me totally rethink what ByteDance is all about.

Monolith: The Open Source powerhouse

Monolith isn’t the latest dystopian novel—though it sounds like it could be. Monolith is a feature storage and serving system that ByteDance developed to keep TikTok smoother than my black sesame latte. But here’s the kicker—ByteDance didn’t keep this gem to themselves; they Open Sourced it! Imagine if Starbucks shared their secret latte recipes. That’s the level of generosity we’re talking about here.

Monolith is designed to handle high-throughput, low-latency operations, making it perfect for applications that need to serve data at lightning speeds—just like TikTok. I found it particularly helpful for building recommendation engines and real-time analytics, where speed and scalability are key.

Speed and scale: Like TikTok on caffeine

We love TikTok because it’s fast—faster-than-I-can-finish-my-latte fast. That’s thanks to Monolith, which handles insane amounts of data at ridiculous speeds. This level of performance is crucial for delivering the smooth, seamless experience TikTok users expect. ByteDance didn’t just make Monolith for themselves—they shared it with the world. It’s like they handed us the keys to their Formula 1 race car and said, “Take it for a spin!” Whether you’re building an app or a website, Monolith’s got your back.

Monolith’s ability to integrate with big data tools and frameworks like Apache Hadoop is another reason developers would want to use it. It’s optimized for real-time processing, a game-changer for any application that needs to be responsive and scalable. It’s also a boon for anyone diving into Machine Learning, where speed improves model training and predictions.

More than just viral videos

Maybe I thought ByteDance was all about creating the world’s most addictive app. But after learning about their Open Source contributions, like Monolith (and others like KubeDL and CloudWeGo), I realized they’re building tech that could shape the future.

Final sip

By making Monolith Open Source, ByteDance is opening doors for developers everywhere. So next time you’re scrolling through TikTok, remember—there’s a whole world of Open Source goodness behind those videos, and we’ve got ByteDance to thank for it.

Quick Monolith code snippet

Here’s a simple way to store and retrieve features using Monolith to get you started:

python:

from monolith import FeatureStore

# Initialize store

store = FeatureStore()

# Store a user’s age feature

store.put(“user_features”, {“user_id”: 123, “age”: 25})

# Retrieve the user’s age feature

print(store.get(“user_features”, {“user_id”: 123}))

So next time you’re scrolling through TikTok, remember—there’s a whole world of Open Source behind those videos helping you with the #RockStarChallenge. Monolith is just the beginning. As of this writing, there are 285 repos on GitHub, covering everything from Elkeid, an Open Source security solution that protects hosts, containers, Kubernetes, and serverless workloads to SALMONN, a speech audio language music open neural network.

What cool Open Source projects are you testing out? What do you work with every day that not enough people know about?
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