I'm a designer/engineer. I'm also a cofounder at Posterous.
Knowing Facebook, they must have AB tested this and found it to be massively effective. Lets show photos of the opposite gender, and tell you that they will miss you. *tears*
Hat tip Patrick Collison -- wow, what a great find. This is remarkable.
Facebook has a rep for attracting good talent, and their products are really, really popular, and yet, from my perspective, whether it's missing, disorganized, or just broken, Facebook's work (not just Facebook Connect) is consummately subpar.
The Facebook API and Facebook Connect continue to have tremendous potential. And the teams behind them are still pushing out some pretty great stuff regularly.
But as the angry blogger above complains, the Facebook API teams need a thorough attitude adjustment to start acting like hungry startup guys again. Maybe there needs to be a true crack-the-whip sort of reorg there. No new features until old bugs are fixed. Each developer does support on their own features, and bugs on those features must be at ZERO before they are allowed to check in. At Microsoft, we called this bug jail.
Also, if the developer who created the feature has to support it day-to-day, you get a bunch of positive behavior where the creator will optimize for ease of use and ease of documentation, which is super advantageous if you're making an API for mass consumption.
I hate to rail on a free service, but as the blogger above mentions -- tough love is better than coddling.
Please don't coddle us -- tell us what you hate about Posterous and we'll fix it. How do we know if it's broken if you don't let us know? =)
Either someone just got paid off for being a real litigious nuisance with otherwise baseless claims (unlikely) or Zuckerberg really kind of was over a barrel with respect to his previous business partners (likely).
Perhaps this also settles the age old question of how much an idea is worth vs. execution. At $65 million, and assuming Facebook has a valuation of at least $2 billion (very conservative estimate), that would put the idea at around 3.25%.
EDIT: My roommate Alex reports "Actually the gloating is worth 65 MM... there was literal IM text from Zuckerberg to others bragging about how he ripped the idea and did the execution better and how stupid these twins were, etc."
I love facebook. They have a great design aesthetic. Overall, the new design is awesome. I like how it opens the page up, and I think it'll do wonders for their ads.
OK, that being said, can someone please tell me why this UI exists?
Unfortunately it's the equivalent of the Vista Shutdown bar -- don't give me these options. One-line, small, large? I do not care how big this story is. I care about my post and my friends' comments and that's it. Every choice you give the user is a decision they have to waste precious brain cycles on.
Paul Graham from YCombinator says that when you look at two choices and can't tell immediately which one you want, it's either that the two choices are too similar, or they don't matter... or most likely, BOTH. This applies perfectly in the UI shown here. As Sachin and I work on Posterous, one of the most important things we can do as designers and engineers is to make sure we actually take away choices that don't matter. We internally talk about how we want to be the Apple of blogging. How do we do it? Just make a decision and move on. We hate preference panels. Be opinionated, as 37signals so aptly notes. And I quote: "The best software has a vision. The best software takes sides. When someone uses software, they're not just looking for features, they're looking for an approach. They're looking for a vision. Decide what your vision is and run with it."Got something to say about posterous? Would love to hear it -- garry [at] posterous dot com
I know this is a little nitpicky, but I am a stickler for grouping, order, and hierarchy.
Is "Welcome to the new facebook" really so important that it's fully left aligned top left? I don't think so.
