One question that’s been asked a lot since Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post is how involved he is in the newspaper’s evolution. Bezos hasn’t spoken in much detail about the subject. (One of his relatively few public comments about his ownership starts at 42:45 of this Business Insider video.) Media references to the Post’s real successes of the past year sometimes seem to give credit to his magical touch — but how engaged is he, really, given that other pretty big company he owns?
Joey Marburger, the Post’s director of digital products and design, precipitated a tweetstorm last night that opened a small window into Bezos’ involvement in the development of the Post’s Kindle Fire app:
.@washingtonpost was named most innovative media company by @FastCompany so I thought I'd share a bit about my year. http://t.co/sAqAN49TEQ
— Joey Marburger ⚡️ (@josephjames) February 11, 2015
I took over as design director right as Jeff Bezos bought the Post. In a few months I'd be talking to him regularly about new products.
— Joey Marburger ⚡️ (@josephjames) February 11, 2015
The first thing he told us was we should build products we love. He wanted to talk tablet. Project Rainbow was born. http://t.co/ZqxD15XIjU
— Joey Marburger ⚡️ (@josephjames) February 11, 2015
Our task was to redefine the news tablet app experience. Nationally-focused Post content. Be simple. Be great. No noise. No pressure?
— Joey Marburger ⚡️ (@josephjames) February 11, 2015
Our job for the next year would be interpreting Jeff and our exec team's design input. It was a grueling pace for everyone.
— Joey Marburger ⚡️ (@josephjames) February 11, 2015
Everyone was working hard but design was what everyone saw. I lived two weeks at a time hoping Jeff would like the next thing.
— Joey Marburger ⚡️ (@josephjames) February 11, 2015
I once worked all night while at a conference in Singapore to figure out a feature. It's too embarrassing to say what it was.
— Joey Marburger ⚡️ (@josephjames) February 11, 2015
My team and others went through more than 20 concept pitches until Jeff picked one half of one concept.
— Joey Marburger ⚡️ (@josephjames) February 11, 2015
That decision made me believe in Bezos. The design he picked is the core of the app you see today. http://t.co/zYw4OhdA6i
— Joey Marburger ⚡️ (@josephjames) February 11, 2015
Quickly we started building, tweaking, experimenting. Then hiring the staff that produces the app.
— Joey Marburger ⚡️ (@josephjames) February 11, 2015
Because the app was so simple everyone wanted to add something. We protected it though. Even Jeff from his own idea at times.
— Joey Marburger ⚡️ (@josephjames) February 11, 2015
I must pause to say w/o my bosses, my team and many others we couldn't have done it. @garciaruize kept me sane.
— Joey Marburger ⚡️ (@josephjames) February 11, 2015
The award-winning journalism you see in the app and the hard work put into creating it is the new daily (twice!) miracle.
— Joey Marburger ⚡️ (@josephjames) February 11, 2015
Don't let the design focus be mistaken. The fact it is super fast. Barely any crashes. Clear editing. Presentation. Design is all of that.
— Joey Marburger ⚡️ (@josephjames) February 11, 2015
That's the shortest version of that story but that's also only the beginning of our wild year. Pt. 2 tomorrow.
— Joey Marburger ⚡️ (@josephjames) February 11, 2015
Because during all of that we hired more than 100 people. Launched 15+ verticals. And started slow jamming a redesign. #wapoyear
— Joey Marburger ⚡️ (@josephjames) February 11, 2015
Two quick thoughts. First, the Kindle Fire app they built is an nice piece of work, with an interesting UX and a twist on the linear-reading model a print newspaper offers. But you probably haven’t heard much about it since its release — because it’s locked on the Kindle Fire, a tablet not that many people use, but which Bezos’ other company happens to make.
In business, they call it a strategy tax when something makes a product less likely to succeed but advances larger corporate goals. (Think Microsoft refusing for so long to release Office for iOS, where it likely would have been a success, because it wanted to prop up its own Windows mobile platforms.) I don’t think it’s a stretch to say there is zero chance this would have launched exclusive to the Kindle Fire if Jeff Bezos was not the owner of the newspaper. It’ll be worth watching to see to what degree future interesting Post work gets constrained to Amazon platforms.
Second, if you haven’t already, read this Fast Company piece from last month — on what went wrong with the Amazon Fire Phone — for a different vision of Bezos’ involvement in product development.
