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Comment by pmf | Hacker News Reader

Facebook has now the best design team in the valley. Hands down.

Gowalla plus Made by Sofa plus Push Pop Press

Facebook does have a solid design team, but I wonder where all that talent is being directed? Visually, their hires in the past year or so haven't made an impact with facebook.com. At least with Google's new design team, you can see what they're doing.

So, one has to ask, what are these people working on? A facebook phone? Facebook X.0?

My bet is Facebook OS on top of Android ala Kindle Fire. the UX will be its only differentiator so much care is needed there.

I really, really hope Facebook doesn't do that. It makes absolutely no sense for anyone to buy a Facebook tablet, unless they intentionally cripple the capabilities of their apps on other tablet platforms.

this just blew my mind.

If the Facebook's new designers do nothing new at all, but they hold the line against Google-style insane UX-destroying experimentation, they will be incredibly valuable.

Have you seen the new Facebook timeline thing? It's a pretty supeb piece of product design, and it looks really nice too.

Path's new implementation of the timeline looks and feels more mature in my opinion.

Just as a point of clarification, Facebook has an incredible existing product design team, but the last year's new hires/acquisitions have yet to prove if all the new blood adds up to the best, e.g. just because you hire a bunch of amazing individual designers, it doesn't mean they're automatically and amazing team.

That said, I have a lot of faith in their culture that they will become so; team-building is just never a given.

Apple is likely still leading.

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