Facebook's Culture of Fast Innovation

February 2, 2012

I’m not going to delve into Facebook’s S-1 IPO filing, given that the world’s press has done a pretty thorough job of that already. (As TechCrunch writer, Alexia Tsotsis, put it: “This Facebook S-1 is like an animal carcass and us bloggers are like a pack of rabid wolves.”)

But it’s here, if you do want to read it. And it *is* pretty fascinating. This phrase stuck out for me, from the section detailing “Risks Related to Our Business and Industry”:

We have a culture that encourages employees to quickly develop and launch new and innovative products. As our business grows and becomes more complex, our cultural emphasis on moving quickly may result in unintended outcomes or decisions that are poorly received by users, developers, or advertisers.

You think? I also loved the entirely un-user-friendly terminology used to describe Facebook’s users: MAUs (“monthly active users”) and DAUs (“daily active users”.) Overlooking the fact that if you sign in once a month you surely can’t be considered “active,” it just all seems so clinical. Then, as Mozilla’s Pascal Finette pointed out to me on Twitter, “DAU” in German stands for “Dümmster Anzunehmender User” or “most stupid user possible.” Well then.

** Update. Maria Popova kindly sent out a note touting this post, describing me as writing about “Facebook’s systematic tendency to dehumanize their users.” That’s precisely what I was tilting at, though a much more eloquent way of putting it.

5:15pm | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZLv7dxFneBt5
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(Notes: 26)