Heron, Twitter's Data Streaming Platform, Has Been Open Sourced

Heron is the name given to Twitter Inc TWTR's real-time stream processing system technology.

The decision to open source Heron was communicated back in late May. Twitter Engineering Manager Karthik Ramasamy stated that Heron is a streaming system that was "born out of the challenges" the company faced due to increases in not only the volume of data passing through its system but the diversity of the data.

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"To process large amounts of data in real-time, we designed Heron for high scale, as topologies can run on several hundred machines," he wrote in a blog past back in May. "At such a scale, optimal resource utilization is critical. We've seen 2–5x better efficiency with Heron, which has saved us significant OPEX and CAPEX costs. This level of efficiency was made possible by both the custom IPC layer and the simplification of the computational components' architecture."

Forbes reported on Thursday that Heron is now open-sourced and available to the community. Unfortunately for investors who are concerned about Twitter's user metrics and outlook, the move is unlikely to have any impact on its business.

Forbes stated that Twitter won't gain any new users from open-sourced technology, but it is not looking to do so.

"It's about internal superfood for a better skin condition on top," Forbes stated.

Shares of Twitter were trading lower by nearly 3 percent late Thursday morning.