Todd Jackson was in a small conference room with a handful of designers, engineers and Mark Zuckerberg. The topic at hand: the Facebook News Feed redesign, intended to declutter the Facebook experience and make it even more engaging. They went over the latest mockups, discussing photo sizes, text density, and the redesigned website navigation. Then they honed in on one seemingly minor point: turning people’s names from blue to black. Jackson, the product manager in the room, knew this was more complicated than one might think.
In fact, Zuckerberg had a simple philosophical stance on the matter — that people’s names should remain bold and blue because people are at the center of Facebook. The people are what all the content pivots around, and they should stand out, he said. Jackson’s team had a different contention: in order to more deeply engage its audience, Facebook needed to evolve to showcase content first.
In this conversation, Jackson had to wear...
Click through to the First Round Capital Review to read more...![]()
Click through to the First Round Capital Review to read more...