Comments on: Facebook's Got Balls

By: Shamus

Shamus — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 05:51:34 +0000

On a scale of 1-10, how smart are you?

By: mattmaroon

mattmaroon — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 01:23:20 +0000

If my article had implied that at all your comment may have made sense. But since it was so far from that, I decided I'd have better luck explaining quantum uncertainty to a cat than simple comparisons to you, so I just deleted your stupidity.

By: Shamus

Shamus — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 21:33:02 +0000

If by stupid, you mean any comment that disputes your silly little gaming website's “next google” status, then yes, my comment was stupid.

By: mattmaroon

mattmaroon — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 20:25:32 +0000

No, I deleted a stupid comment. Doesn't take much time.

By: Shamus

Shamus — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 20:08:03 +0000

Oh, shocker. You deleted a negative comment. I bet you're busy.

By: Shamus

Shamus — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 14:45:22 +0000

Please stop mentioning blue frog gaming in the same breath as Google and Facebook. You're losing credibility by the boatload.

By: Bertil

Bertil — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 08:00:49 +0000

Actually, creative destruction is through competition: newly organised business should replace obsolete industrial solutions; it's what's been happening to newspapers. What you describe is design or feature choice, and that is better described by the Aggregation business model (developped to explain software ndustry, but that match Car manufacturers too) where one company decides on what features to put in a limited number of sets, each set having a nice name a fancy ribbon around it. It's about avoiding the user to have to decide what driver, add-on and nook to install and how to make is work, because it's cheaper for a large organisation to make those decision then to let users figure them out; Linux is the counter example to that model and Distros are the classic case. Every possible sets annoys some, but should satisfy, mostly; every changes pleases somes, and makes others worst off. Examples of this includes: family with three children facing Family (Two adults + Two children) plans; iPhone developpers who made apps for features includeds in the 3.0; Windows users who need the Personal Business Version plus one feature only available in the Extra-Power Large Business Version.

— An anal-economist.

By: Jesse Farmer

Jesse Farmer — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 21:27:11 +0000

Doug's complaint wasn't about organization inertial. Google is quite nimble for a company its size, IMO, at least compared to its peers.

His complaint was instead about how decisions were made. He didn't like the fact that all his design decisions were subjected to the cold light of data. He thought it was stupid or wasteful or, well, I'm not really sure what, to test 41 shades of blue. But what if those shades made a real difference?

It just depends on the language you speak. Doug speaks designer-ese, Google speaks data. His story makes it sound like they were talking past each other, not that Google was failing in any fundamental way.

Maybe a company like that isn't suitable for a designer like Doug. Amazon is the same way and I couldn't imagine being a designer there, for example.