[thephyber]

I worked at a smaller social media website. We were constantly pressured by investors+management to grow new users and grow engagement of existing users. It turns out these 2 requirements were constantly in tension, so naturally we had 2+ teams that were constantly changing the same page templates in a perverted Yin/Yang struggle.

One of Steve Job's best (IMHO) jobs at Apple was to constantly apply pressure on all teams+products to _simplify_ everything. The universe (including social media websites) tends towards entropy, so it takes a special kind of product team to both achieve primary goals and continue to keep the UX/UI clean and unobtrusive.

I've noticed sites that combine

  - cookie warning,
  - app download prompt,
  - browser notifications permissions,
  - browser location permissions,
  - nudge me to login just to lurk,
  - use tracking/analytics such as QuantCast which occasionally offers the viewer a survey to gather demographics,
  - display multiple ad networks,
  - then pop up dialog/modal for a "special offer" after my mouse leaves the viewport

Each of these in isolation is a business requirement, perhaps even a reasonable one. It requires a rare type of business hierarchy to allow one department to override another's business requirements for the sake of something as vague as "a better look and feel".

Craigslist is the only site I'm really envious of. It has been around for basically the lifetime of the web, but has managed to keep the UX/UI the site very minimal and still managed to provide a decent product which makes a healthy profit.