What happens internally when you engage with friends on Facebook? Meet TAO

Facebook recently took users behind the curtain for an in-depth look at the engine that powers the social graph: TAO. Whenever you check into a place, comment on a friend’s status, or like a photo, TAO knows.

TAO, which stands for The Associations and Objects is the motor that keeps Facebook’s graph going, learning about relationships between users.

Facebook illustrated what TAO does and thoroughly explained its function:

Facebook puts an extremely demanding workload on its data backend.