1. A method, comprising: identifying a plurality of content types in a database of a social network, wherein members of the social network produce and request content from the database, and characteristics of the content define the content as certain ones of the content types; identifying job types to be performed on each content type when requests from members of the social network are received; selecting a sharding process for each content type based on processing characteristics of the job types to be performed on the content type; sharding, by a processor, the database into a first group of shards for content types having job types with a first set of processing characteristics, wherein the first set of processing characteristics indicate that the associated job types are parallel processing efficient; sharding, by the processor, the database into a second group of shards for content types having job types with a second set of processing characteristics, wherein the second set of processing characteristics indicate that associated job types are linear processing efficient, the first and second group of shards defining a multi-shard database; and servicing requests for content from the multi-shard database, wherein the requests for content associated with job types having parallel processing efficiency are provided content from the first group of shards and requests for content associated with job types having linear processing efficiency are provided content from the second group of shards.