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I hope people on HN understand that this is a talented person providing an honest opinion about their work. Which is rare, and should be commended, rather than being treated as evidence of a conspiracy.

I'm not going to get all conspiratorial on you, but to pretend like someone blogging on the Internet is being completely candid about their work? C'mon.

I suspect that it did have to go through some kind of PR person at Facebook, and perhaps wasn't even written by her, but I still like it. Most companies couldn't turn a response out to a non-crisis so quickly. It highlights agility to constructively engage in a discussion with a critic.

I can attest it was written by Julie. Most likely reviewed by some folks for a quick fact check.

All the better then!

It's a response to someone with an equal level of credibility on the subject. And yes, with something to gain.

I don't think they have equal credibility. Julie has way more context about this decision than any of us from the outside, including Dustin, can have.

Much has been said/written already about the Facebook community and where users are. There is a long term trend that early adopters of Facebook (read Western world) are using Facebook less (though using their OAuth identification more). Facebook is growing in the rest of the world (read Asia - WhatsApp has a billion non-US users). The main means of internet access (almost exclusively) for these users (the next billion Facebookers) are feature phones and smart phones. Through this context, it is quite intuitive why they are making the decisions they are.

Sorry but screen width is a pretty dumb reason to drop a rich experience on larger screens.

It's just another media query.

Why can't 27 inch/high res/super duper screens get the awesome layout, and shitty "poor people" screens get the shitty layout?

But an inconsistent experience, if the page looks vastly different for some people than for others.

I don't get why you're downvoted.

Toggling between two completely different newsfeeds based on screen size is not responsive—it's inconsistent.

If you don't agree, check out how different the old and the new feed are.

what if... there's a middle ground?

If facebook was set on using media queries, im sure they would have kept the same general design but just optimised layout and spacing for different screen sizes.

You guys are going down a pointless path of pedantry. The original attack suggested Facebook's sole reason for making the decision was advertising metrics. This person is saying that isn't true. I'm guessing the team running one of the top trafficked sites in the world is aware of media queries.

Yeah that was kind of my point... I got sucked in.

It doesn't have to look vastly different, it just has to look 'designed' for each screen size. This isn't a difficult problem... I'm wondering if responsive web design is a foreign concept within facebook. :\

Facebook.com isn't responsive (you'll see fixed width's, just check it out), so it does seem that responsive design is something they disregard purposefully.

Facebook cares too much about their performance to use responsive design.

People are used to different experiences on different devices. You can argue that they expect mobile and desktop versions to differ, but I can also argue that a 10-inch netbook is a very different device from a Retina MacBook.

Facebook already has an inconsistent experience. For instance, I've been viewing Facebook with this new design for a few days now, whereas other people are presumably still on the old one.

This is mostly a function of ramping up to Facebook scale and is a temporary inconsistency.

As a UX designer, there are all kinds of reasons the design could have been unsuccessful, on small screens or just in general.

Media queries don't fix everything.

I'm sorry, but they fix EXACTLY that problem. If you need a UI to work at different sizes... that is what media queries are for.

The design can change quite drastically using media queries. I can look at facebook for about 2 minutes to see how they could improve at different sizes.

They fix exactly what problem? The single problem of the sizing of components on the screen? Great!

I did not mention one problem—I alluded to many. What about the problem of people not clicking links? What about the problem of users not understanding how to navigate to events? How about lack of awareness of which of your friends are online? Etc. etc.

Media queries fix exactly one problem. The size and position of elements on different sized screens.

There are thousands of other things to evaluate in a design that have nothing to do with that. I realize you're focused on this specific issue, but Facebook has to worry about all of them at once.

Media queries don't fix everything.

They could do both (like every other competent UX team does).

All of those problems are still their, I was responding to the point made in the post, that they couldn't ship the awesome design, because there are people with little screens... That is what responsive is for, meaning they could have shipped exactly what they shipped PLUS the awesome design (that they themselves, said was awesome).

So yes, media queries fix exactly their problem, as they had two designs that they liked, but one was only good for big screens, the other for little screens.

To put it more bluntly they had already solved all the other issues (and more) you talked about... just the screen size was the only problem (cited in that post!)

> shitty "poor people" You've offended billions.

in case you are serious: the full quote was 'shitty "poor people" screens' which parses not to 'shitty poor people' but to 'shitty screens for poor people' and is not really offensive.

Despite having a decent phone, an iPad, and not being "poor" in any meaningful sense of the word, I still read Facebook on a PC, and am glad they design for it.

> an honest opinion about their work

How do you know? She's a director, and by definition totally in bed with the leadership. Would she publicly admit to decisions made in favor of ad revenue and against what's best for the user? Why didn't she, as Product Design Director, or anyone else at Facebook argue for defaulting to stronger rather than weaker privacy settings, or object to the undermining or even ignoring of previously made privacy choices under the guise of new feature releases? And if she or anyone did, and they were shot down, would she tell us?

So many people trusted Colin Powell, including much of the world after his U.N. testimony. Look where that got us. (What Colin Powell Knew and What He Said: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-schwarz/colin-powell-...) [And no, waterlesscloud, I'm not comparing "the design of the Facebook newsfeed to the Iraq War," I'm making a point about trusting people with a conflict of interest and/or loyal to the party under question.]

Did you really just compare a post about the design of the Facebook newsfeed to the Iraq War?

Dial it down a bit, please.

| She's a director, and by definition totally in bed with the leadership.

This is what's wrong with society today. Assumptions that are both wrong and sexist. Good job sir.

While I don't agree with the parent, accusing her of being "in bed" with another person or group is not sexist – it's a common idiom which refers to having an undesirably close or underhanded association with others.

Nearly every time I've heard the phrase "in bed with" it's been in reference to men, and the meaning is hot man-on-man collusion (not sex).

However it is a really unfortunate phrase to use where the group is mixed gender. Especially so when it's an imbalanced mix, such as very few women.

(I think everyone should get a small stack of "Yikes did I really say that?" chips. Only after someone runs out of their chips should we bring out the pitchforks and enjoy ourselves a nice cathartic public shaming spree.)

>poor people use Facebook on a computer.

low end Android and Nokia handsets cost less than the cheapest PCs and Laptops.

What's your point? Someone who is very poor will likely get a netbook as they can email, go on FB, process text documents, do some basic gaming etc.

I beg to differ.

Is it a org-wide policy at Facebook that the relevant product / operations head respond to criticism leveled at Facebook in private forums?

Are employees required to proactively defend their decisions, on private / public forums?

Is this the raison d'être for PMs at Facebook?

The reason I'm curious is that I have never seen a Facebook employee ever admit a flub here on HN. They mostly surface here to reaffirm the company position.

I don't know if the employees realize it or not but for the most part, this kind of spineless defending - and I have observed it on more than one occasion - appears to outsiders as virtue-less boot-licking.

I hope that the Facebook employees know that they are allowed to have differing and contrasting opinions.

Just because their founder doles out hundreds of millions of dollars to nameless causes and charities with unaccountable outcomes, does not mean that his every strategic move is unimpeachably virtuous, made with the best intentions of the user-base in mind.

Forsaking their reputation to salvage their founder's self-serving acquisitions might seem great now.

But these kinds of self-inflicted character-assassinations are bound to haunt the careers of the employees, in the long run.

I would advise Ms.Zhuo to think twice before coming to the defense of her founder especially in such nakedly crony-corporate-land-grab decisions, especially when she knows full well this kind of thing is indefensible and not in the interest of the public.

You've got a lot of chips on your shoulder it appears. I would advise you to figure out why you hate Facebook so much, and try to come up with a better reason to disagree than the angry place you are coming from.