If you haven’t yet read Mills Baker’s recent post Designer Duds: Losing our seat at the table, you should. Mills makes some excellent points, including this one that I regard as his thesis: “In order to avoid losing its place atop organizations, design must deliver results. Designers must also accept that if they don’t, they’re […]

Continue Reading: Design duds != business duds

The current battle of the social web is to create the single stream that gets the most attention. Watch the giants copy each other.

Continue Reading: One stream to rule them all (the real Facebook vs. Twitter war)

Fred Destin weighs in on Snapchat and that old no revenues debate after skeptics questioned Facebook’s $3,000,000,000 offer for Snapchat: “A few years down the road, YouTube is clearly a phenomenal acquisition. How would you like to be in the shoes of the company who paid under $2 billion for the world’s largest media and […]

Continue Reading: Think that was worth 2%?

Interesting piece on how Facebook did UX testing for their new Home software. Some of the more interesting bits include: Did most of the testing on Facebook employees (non-design or development) Utilized diary testing to find out about long-term effects of content (initial reaction is often positive, wanted to see how people liked it over […]

Continue Reading: How Facebook did UX testing for Home

Josh Williams, founder of Gowalla, has written Play by your own rules., which offers many insights on the Foursquare vs. Gowalla wars. Williams describes how Gowalla got sucked into a “check-in” war with foursquare after raising VC money and so were playing a game they didn’t want to play. The check-in wars redefined Gowalla’s product…they […]

Continue Reading: How VC money can change your product

But former Facebook and Twitter product guy Josh Elman makes a good point in What is “Growth Hacking” really?? “you do need to find the right “hacks” that help you get to those points of sustainable growth. LinkedIn started with Reid Hoffman inviting his entire professional network to join him, Facebook started expanding college-by-college waiting until […]

Continue Reading: Growth hacking may not be the best term…

Josh Miller, one of the makers of Branch: “A few months ago, my fifteen-year-old sister told me that Snapchat was going to be the next Instagram. Many months before that she told me that Instagram was being used by her peers as much as Facebook. Both times I snickered. Learning from past mistakes, I took […]

Continue Reading: Tenth Grade Tech Trends

Somewhat lost in the whole Facebook Poke/Snapchat brewhaha is what people actually use the different services for. Many people characterize Snapchat as a “sexting app” simply because the pictures/videos you capture with it have a lifespan of a few seconds. And its true that there is some sexting going on. But as Sarah Lacy points […]

Continue Reading: Calling Snapchat “the sexting app” misses a huge shift in mobile, photos, and communication

Alexis Madrigal writes why we should want to pay for software: “Under these conditions, companies have to sell themselves because they do not have a sustainable business. And when they’re sold, they either A) get shut down or B) become part of an advertising machine, like Facebook’s. Truly, the only way to get around the […]

Continue Reading: Why You Should Want to Pay for Software, Instagram Edition

Lurking is the number one activity on the Web…and is therefore extremely important to design for.

Continue Reading: Why lurking (and de-lurking) in social networks is a big deal