Do it like Facebook

gregnews:

When I was building my first business in the late-90s, a friend who I was working with on a large project gave me some sage advice: Do it like Amazon.

He explained that for any kind of decision on functionality or user interface, the default answer should be Amazon’s answer. In our case we were asking: Should we have people make usernames or just register/login with their email addresses? Amazon just does email addresses, so do that.

If you didn’t do what Amazon does, there had better be a compelling reason why not, because Amazon had the benefit of the most experienced engineers and one of the largest bases of users to test with.

Now, the web has changed a lot and Facebook is the company that’s pioneeringinternet innovation. Facebook has over 200 engineers — arguably the most experienced team in social-driven web platforms — and over 300 million users.Facebook’s testing many new changes to its site daily with large sample sizes of users, so most parts of Facebook are the way they are for a good reason.

When you’re making all the little decisions necessary at the beginning of your next web project, you might want to consider the default position: Do it like Facebook.

Now of course that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t break with Facebook’s way occasionally or even all the time. But you need to know the rules (and who’s making them) before you can break them.

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I have a better idea. Don’t do it like Facebook. Facebook’s solutions may yet be its downfall. FB wants to be your...
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