Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg sure knows how to stay on-message. He's addressed the SXSW attendees twice, once in a quote-unquote disastrous Q&A session with reporter Sarah Lacy, and again today in a semi-impromptu "make-up" Q&A session where he took questions from the crowd.

In neither gathering did he say much that was either quotable or particularly interesting (which is why I haven't posted on it after attending both events).

Luckily, I bumped into Facebook Product Designer Soleio Cuervo in the crowd, and sat down with him for a brief chat about Facebook's UI, and how it's used by both Facebook users and Facebook developers (including third-party developers).


Gearlog: One of the first things that comes to mind when you think of Facebook design is actually the design constraints put on users. Do users like the clean look or are they frustrated by the constraints?

People will always want more control over their identity. For a lot of users, identity is directly tied with their style...the decision to use a black background with a particular font, for example. I sometimes wish I could establish a more stylistic page. But our mission is to communicate more efficiently, and individual expression can sometimes come at the cost of efficiency. So if we allow people to muddy up the style of their pages, the cost is ultimately incurred by their friends; it's difficult for them to find a piece of information. So we're always going to err on the side of making things as efficient as possible to spread information around the site. Self-expression is kind of secondary to that.

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