Writing
Social Design
“It’s so easy to go try and find an algorithmic solution to a problem,” he says. “But this isn’t about computersâit’s about people.” At an event last week, Mr. Cox gave a name to Facebook’s preference for developing social, rather than technological, solutions: “social design.”
It’s very smart of Facebook to recognize the advantages of harnessing human behavior instead of trying to imitate it computationally. The classic example in my mind is Amazon’s “other people who bought this also bought…” list. It turns out that emergent purchasing behavior is more useful than algorithmic recommendations.