"Do you think users preferred Facebook over MySpace because of its programming or because of its user experience?" I think it was a combination of the two, but

"Do you think users preferred Facebook over MySpace because of its programming or because of its user experience?" I think it was a combination of the two, but that is my whole point to start with. As someone who was a member of facebook when it was still "thefacebook" if you remember in the beginning the UX was very basic, people flocked to it because of its exclusivity to an extent and they stayed (at least in my opinion) because they weren't having the constant downtime they were used to experiencing with a site like "friendster". Facebook was the site that people stayed on because it was fun "facebook stalking" became a hobby for many, that had much less to do with the UX then most people would lead you to believe. My basic point is that while a good UX is a necessity in the beginning a great one is not, because your users will demand what they want in usability. But with a faulty system or code that is constantly being chopped and hacked the growth of your system and frequent downtime for fixes could very well be your downfall. EDIT: I would also like to say that I do NOT think your "code is invisible" statement really holds true. Good code is elegant in itself, it allows for subtle flaws to be hidden, and neat little tricks that a good hacker can make happen is what excites users and makes them come back for more, even if they don't know it is code doing it, they can see it and it does make a diffrence. (at least in my opinion)