The disclosure is directed to moving an application, e.g., a messenger service in a social networking application, to various locations in a distributed computing system, e.g., to improve an efficiency of the application. For example, the application can be moved to a data center that is closer to a location of a user to decrease a latency associated with accessing the application. In another example, the application can be moved to a data center that is closer to a location of a storage system that stores data associated with the application to improve a throughput of the application, e.g., a rate at which data is read and/or written.