Hi,

I'm developing an app that is vaguely similar to twitter, in that it allows users to follow one another. I wanted to do this using google app engine, for its scalability promises, but it's proving kind of difficult to get running for a few different reasons.

I'd basically like to have a _users table, and a _followers table. Users go into the users table, follower relationships go into _followers. The problem is that each row in the users table will probably have like 100 corresponding records in the _followers table as users start following one another. So the number of rows is going to explode quickly.

Using app engine, the volume [shouldn't] be a problem.

If I go with mysql, and I do actually start to get some traction, how do I scale this up? Am I going to just end up moving to a distributed database in the end anyway? Should I fight it out with google app engine? I read that Twitter was using mysql, and they've run into this problem, and are now switching to cassandra.

Thanks