Facebook’s Zuckerberg: Yep, we were in lockdown

Update: Here’s a roundup of today’s Facebook news.

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg is speaking to reporters at the company headquarters in Palo Alto, and he just confirmed that the company is coming out of a 60-day “lockdown” period.

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In other words, the Facebook team had a period of intense work to develop new products and improve existing ones. It’s a callback to what Zuckerberg reportedly said during the company’s early days when he wanted everyone to stay focused until they finished a new product: “We’re in lockdown! No one leaves the table until we’re done with this thing.”

In the past few months, Facebook has launched the Places and Questions features, and it has also improved Photos and other existing services. And there are more improvements that will be announced in the next few months, Zuckerberg said.

When I broke the story two months ago that Facebook had entered this lockdown period, I said it was largely to fend off Google, which was developing social features. Zuckerberg didn’t mention Google today, instead saying that the lockdown period was an effort to “double down” (though that doesn’t mean Google wasn’t on his mind).

TechCrunch confirmed the lockdown last night and said that as a result, today’s press event would focus on a major site redesign. However, Zuckerberg said that’s not the case. He just wanted to update everyone about the lockdown before getting into the real news — which he’s outlining now, and which I’ll cover in a separate post.