He doesn't work for Medium.

Ok, well, if this is really some big ploy by Facebook to now allow their employees to have personal blogs, then why do so many exist?

https://medium.com/facebook-design

I don't believe it's a ploy. I think John's just doing what he feels to be the right thing given that he is — at least to the audience he writes to — a high-ranking employee of Facebook.

I couldn't even tell you if he even thought that deeply about it. He possibly just thought "I can just write what I need to here, this works" and immediately considered it a solved problem.

It's probably because as a designer Facebook is fucking ugly and at least Medium has decent typography.

I suspect the function of design at FB is oriented more toward consistency than beauty.

If by "consistency" you mean "function over form" then sure. It's basically brutalist.

If a website's aesthetics were important to Facebook's users they never would have joined. http://www.businessinsider.com/what-facebook-used-to-look-li...

Like Craigslist, people don't really have a choice with Facebook. You either use it, as ugly as it is, or don't.

I'm not sure what you mean. You mean they don't have a choice in the design? Because there were plenty of alternatives (MySpace). Facebook just provided a better experience.

Facebook's software might be better, their uptake was better, but that doesn't mean their site is more visually appealing. It just means it's more effective.

Function over form.

By "consistency" I mean that its design is evolutionary and hasn't radically changed since the beginning.

http://time.com/11740/facebook-10-year-anniversary-interface...