We also established an Advisory Board—a trusted group of people who routinely provide their thoughts on new and current features. The members were selected based on their involvement as contributors to our product preview pages, which we've used in the past to show exactly what's changing on the site ahead of time. For instance, when we were planning to launch changes to Facebook's design last May, there was a Page where people could find information and submit feedback. In some cases, we also invite smaller groups of people to test products over an extended period of time. This way we can focus on understanding how people use them as part of their normal routine. The process isn't one-size-fits-all, and normally, we use some combination of these methods to understand what will work best for people using the site.

Sometimes, your reactions make us realize that new features still need additional work from our design and engineering teams. Other times, you've led us to develop new features. For instance, we've heard that it can be hard to find friends when people first join Facebook, which is why, in addition to constantly improving our search feature, we also created People You May Know and the Friend Finder. They are both focused on helping you find your friends more easily.