They say spinach is healthy. (where “they” = Popeye, the FDA, and my mom. Hi mom!). So I eat spinach. Shoot, I eat spinach like you for breakfast. But even though I’m quite proud of my spinach-gobbling ways I still find it just as embarrassing as the next self-conscious spinach-eating guy to find out, after some amount of time spent in public, that I have a little sumpin’ sumpin’ stuck in my teeth.  In case you’re not a spinach-muncher (ooh, that sounds dirty) let me fill you in on how this works:

For me, the degree of embarrassment is positively, linearly correlated with the following two variables, summed together: 1. The total number of human interactions I’ve had since the time of spinaches consumption. (that’s start time, not end time, you never know when that sucker got wedged in there)

 2.The amount of spinach stuck in ones teeth, measured in really-small-units, squared.

embarrassment

And further, the embarrassment is positively, exponentially correlated with the degree to which I care what those people think about me. Here are some examples:

Not very embarrassing: The construction worker who waves at me as I bike to work—incidentally, he also has something hanging out of his nose. Should I say something?

A little embarrassing: Marcel Laverdet. I don’t particularly care what Marcel thinks -- mostly because it’s a lost cause. Apparently I’m “at the top of the bottom” of his friend barrel.  That’s right people, Marcel keeps his friends in barrels.  So it’s only embarrassing at all because I know he’ll tease me about it later in front of more people who are higher in my friend barrel.  That’s right. I have one too. I got it at the same place Marcel did, but for cheaper because I promised to let the sales guy be on top….of the barrel, people. 

Pretty embarrassing: A date; all of my coworkers – all of them, or a support group for S.E.A.  - spinach eaters anonymous. 

Really embarrassing: Techcrunch, the New York Times, Computer World, your friends family, and everyone.

I don’t know if you noticed something about that last sentence, but it appeared to have a little segue stuck in its teeth …A couple weeks ago, I helped Facebook launch a product that tasted a lot like spinach. No, it wasn’t baby cabbage or field greens, it was Beacon: a means by which Facebook users can allow their friends to see what they’re up to in the world besides hanging out on Facebook. It's designed to increase the types of information that can flow between friends. For example – I just rented the West Wing, Season 5 on blockbuster. If my friends knew that, they would think I was super smart, and obviously not just trying to show off since I’m all the way on season five.  Beacon would let me auto-pump that information onto my profile (mini-feed) and my friends' News Feeds. I could buy a book on Ebay,  tickets on Travelocity, write a review on Yelp – and all of that can now be fed into News Feed. Way less so-and-so wrote on so-and-so’s fun wall, and way more real information. Cool, right?

Eventually, yes. But no matter how healthy this product will one day be for people, man-oh-man did we have a whole garden of  beacon stuck in our teeth when we launched the first version in front of a very large, and critical audience (see figure A above). Luckily, our friends at EVERY NEWS SOURCE EVER were nice enough to  say “Psst. Facebook-dudes, you might want to go look in a mirror – you’re usually pretty hot, but we can’t see past that big ol' piece of something.” Ok, they didn’t say “Psst” so much as “HEADLINE: “ but at least they let us know we’d messed up before too many ChrisKwanzikukkahs. (the main problem with the design was that it would happen at inopportune times, or people didn’t notice it was happening, so some mom would buy a gift on for her kid, and her kid would see that in news feed. Bummer, huh?).

Throughout the drama and following it, I went through the expected emotions. A bit of defensiveness cause we'd tried to do the right thing, some guilt because of the mistakes, some sympathy, some frustration, indignation, camaraderie with the team, determination to get it right, pride in our response, embarrassment, obvs, and ended up where we all have to, to stay sane: the feeling of appreciation for having learned something.  For example, I’ve learned to spend more time doing user testing; I’ve learned to read the mainstream news even less than I do now because I can’t discern fact from sensationalization from fiction; and I've learned that there are worse things than having a little piece of leafy green iron-rich calcium-packed veggie stuck between my teeth...

...like accidentally calling my own phone instead of this other girl's, and getting mad that she had the EXACT same outgoing voice mail message as i do" I am SO sorry i missed your call..." I got so mad, that i told Ezra, who was sitting right there, about how that b*** stole my message. He politely asked if i'd accidentally called my own phone, and i said something to the effect of "how stupid do you think i am?" soon after, i checked my one new message, only to hear my very own voice, requesting a return phone call. I crawled underneath my desk where ezra couldn't see me.