Earlier today ReadWriteWeb posted about Facebook’s impending Public Status Updates under the title “The Day Facebook Changed Forever: Messages to Become Public By Default.”  The post had made some assumptions based on Facebook’s blog post “More Ways to Share in the Publisher” AND empirical results obtained from actually using the new feature.  The problem was the new feature being tried was still buggy. The actual functionality and the functionality described in the blog post did not match. The actual experience trumped the described functionality in the blog post.

At first glance, it might seem that ReadWriteWeb jumped the gun and will take some credibility hits. However, the abstract nature of written specifications prevails and thus they are naturally discounted, even ignored, when there are hands-on opportunities to observe the (specified) behavior.

This makes the case for prototyping. To some, it may also substantiate a process involving hands-on interface and functional development before expending effort on detailed specifications (and given the situation, to question the utility of detailed specifications at all).

The argument for or against detailed specifications will never end.

Arguably, in verifying their source, ReadWriteWeb did what comes naturally (and even made a screencast video of it to further communicate the functionality).