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Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

dcurt.is

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Re: Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

#11

Post by pbreit »

mtgentry wrote: post #7

Zuck is brilliant at many things. But when someone says he's great at product, I raise an eyebrow. Seems to me they A/B tested their way to the top. FB today reminds me of Google 5 years ago. Their 41-shades-of-blue-testing days. But Google learned to listen to more right-brain arguments so maybe FB can too.

Facebook's biggest shortcoming is that it appears to have no ability to roll out a new product. I would be much more impressed if Facebook were able to crush Instagram, Whats App or SnapChat. It certainly has the resources but apparently not the know-how.

Re: Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

#13

Post by k-mcgrady »

A depressing thought but important especially if you are running a startup. It's ok for Facebook to take a hit like this and revert but if you spend 6 months at your startup redesigning your product and even though people like it your revenues suffer massively you might not even have time to test and revert back.

Re: Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

#14

Post by elwell »

kordless wrote: post #5
swombat wrote: post #4

Of course, because money is the only criteria that is important to any business. There couldn't possibly be anything else, like a sense of mission or purpose, that could inform decisions.

Cognitive dissonance at its finest, folks.

No, moral dissonance.

Re: Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

#15

Post by roc »

pbreit wrote: post #10

Making something easier to glance at doesn't necessarily mean it's better. I think a better design for something like Facebook is something that's more engaging. This isn't search.

Which is just begging the question of whether more time/more hits == more engagement.

Re: Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

#16

Post by higherpurpose »

It seems Facebook really is going through the Google phases, and they've always wanted to "be Google" anyway. Right now they're in the Google phase of 5-7 years or so ago, when Google was still doing everything by the numbers, even at the expense of UI and UX.

Just like Google of 5-7 years ago, they're also spreading their focus on many projects, and in a few years probably forgetting about them and ignoring them, if they don't turn into big cash cows for them almost immediately. Then expect Facebook to kill a lot of services, just like Google did.

Re: Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

#18

Post by elwell »

pbreit wrote: post #11
mtgentry wrote: post #7

Zuck is brilliant at many things. But when someone says he's great at product, I raise an eyebrow. Seems to me they A/B tested their way to the top. FB today reminds me of Google 5 years ago. Their 41-shades-of-blue-testing days. But Google learned to listen to more right-brain arguments so maybe FB can too.

Facebook's biggest shortcoming is that it appears to have no ability to roll out a new product. I would be much more impressed if Facebook were able to crush Instagram, Whats App or SnapChat. It certainly has the resources but apparently not the know-how.

It's not just about "known-how". Many people downloaded Instagram because it was cool and precisely because it wasn't Facebook.

Re: Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

#19

Post by waterlesscloud »

What I take from this is that Dustin Curtis plays Farmville and is a member of a shadowy group named "secret group".

Actually, the question of the piece is a good one. It's really about what you're optimizing for. As every halfway decent manager knows, you get what you measure. Which means deciding what to measure is one of the most important decisions you can make.

So, in this case, do you measure user engagement time for individual sessions? Or is there some sort of "engagement longevity" which might show a better timeline keeps people visiting more often over a longer period of time?

The other possible approach would be to see what could be done to make events and profile pages more appealing to spend time on. There may not be a way to do that if the timeline satisfies people, but it would be worth investigating.

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