Amusing Comment Thread
readwriteweb.com
readwriteweb.com
I'm convinced that some people approach the internet like an angry driver gripping the wheel without any sense of reality. Things like this remind me who we're often designing for and has to be done to make our work usable.
If > 50 people can arrive at a page, completely disregard the logo and read not a single word in the body BUT still find the comment form, something is wrong.
People are stupid. They are also our customers.
"Especially in Silicon Valley, where it's easy for entrepreneurs to isolate themselves in circles with like-minded techies and fellow entrepreneurs, I feel that a huge amount of startup CEOs and designers... make product decisions that appeal to their own interaction behaviour with such applications or what they think their friends will find cool.
"Building for geeks makes for great customer immersion if you're building something like (the wonderfully useful) GitHub, but that same process doesn't work so hot if you're building a site for middle-aged moms."
via http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/2009/09/design-for-startup...
Now you got me thinking; the intersection of people who use the Internet and people who drive is a pretty large set.
Looking at that thread, I may never go on the road again.
Yes, something is wrong, but in this case I wouldn't blame the website.
On the other hand it would not shock me at all to learn that many of the confused commenters in this case are not just "computer illiterate", but illiterate sensu stricto, unable to (for example) parse the front page of a newspaper. Of course this is not to say that they can't learn - but user interface design can only go so far; at some point education is necessary.
Oh wow, thats even worse then the RWW thread.
edit: the best I can find is "facebook true login", I bet there's another combo that RWW is listing first for.
Author Mike Melanson, Inadvertent SEO Superstar
[1] http://www.google.com/trends?q=facebook%2C+facebook+login
So it's the preferential treatment Google gives to "news results" that moved this page to the top.
But how many people who google "facebook" are looking for anything other than facebook.com? I know that people like us it seems no one would logically go to the site that way, but those of us who watch people use the web know better.
So this seems like a case of Google returning results on what it imagines people want rather than what I'm willing to bet the statistics overwhelmingly indicate people want.
Interesting.
Very sad, but I guess it's really a good reminder that we live in a bubble. For a lot of people, the Internet is magic and they don't know what to do when something changes.
"Dear visitors from Google. This site is not Facebook. This is a website called ReadWriteWeb that reports on news about Facebook and other Internet services. You can however click here to become a Fan of ReadWriteWeb on Facebook, to receive our updates and learn more about the Internet. To access Facebook, please type "facebook.com" into your browser address bar or type "facebook" into Google and click on the first result."
Pretty funny.
That looks like a task an automated filter could do.
This was the first profile I clicked on. I am speechless.
So perhaps they thought they were somehow logging into Facebook but while they were really doing some kind of remote authentication.
This is also exposes a massive downside to implementing Facebook connect.
(lifted from one of the sane comments)
Not that I'm saying those commenters are theoretical physicists, but ... the bubble theory is a pretty strong one.
RWW is really pushing against HN, huh? First they tried to get high-karma members of the site to link to them (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1103021). Now, they are posting themselves really cheap links, to things that really don't matter.
Also, about the earlier "incident," we've discussed it internally and with the HN dude who was involved, and it's sorted. Our writer didn't know she was crossing a line.
Ultimately, we like the interaction here, and we try to post stuff on HN that the developer/startup community might find interesting, amusing, and informative.