Facebook announces new A/B testing framework called Airlock

Facebook has developed a new mobile A/B testing framework, it announced today. In a post on the company’s engineering blog, engineers Ari Grant and Kang Zhang explained that when Facebook switched to native development stacks two years ago, it gave them finer control over many aspects of mobile development, but also meant losing the ability to A/B test.

Ever wonder how you can navigate Facebook’s mobile app better today than last year? Or how that once-horrid timeline that didn’t quite flow has now become easily accessible with a single hand? Facebook engineers Ari Grant and Kang Zhang announced it’s because of its new user test they built, and it’s called Airlock. When Facebook committed to native app development for its mobile products two years ago, it lost the ability to test its performance in an A/B setting–one that’s needed for a scale as big as Facebook’s, and is only viable in web apps.