The Library of Minds The Hidden Story Behind the Like Button
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Oct 9, 2025 Soleio Cuervo, an influential product designer and co-inventor of the Like button at Facebook, shares his insights from his journey at tech giants. He emphasizes the importance of speed as a competitive advantage and how early coding influenced his design philosophy. Soleio reveals the story behind the Like button's development and discusses when to pivot or persist with projects. He contrasts Facebook's rapid iteration with Dropbox's focus on reliability and encourages a rethink of UX in the AI era. Tune in for valuable advice on blending speed with quality!
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Like Button's Two-Year Journey
- The Like Button began as an internal hackathon project nicknamed the "awesome button."
- It lived in product purgatory for about two years before shipping due to repeated rejections.
Speed As A Competitive Advantage
- Facebook treated speed as its core competitive advantage and built culture around shipping quickly.
- Design focused on enabling engineers and creating self-serve components, not just visual polish.
Require Designers To Ship Code
- Enforce ownership: require designers to ship code so they can fix issues immediately.
- Remove permission barriers so people can iterate and tidy up the product without gatekeepers.
