

Confession: I am Facebook Login Scum - DanielBMarkham
http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2011/01/confession-i-am.php

======
maxklein
First of all, facebook is going to contact you shortly because you are
infringing on their trademark. They are quite vigilant about this.

Secondly, it would have been a bit more interesting to actually post the
results, and not just the site.

Thirdly, why would people living in urban areas be less literate than people
from rural areas? Usually, people from urban areas are better educated than
people from rural areas.

Fourthly, if you are targeting people who cannot read well, why is there so
much (pretty high-level comprehension level) text on your pages?

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Thanks for the comment, Max. These are really good questions that I didn't
address in the article, so I'm going to answer them. After that I'm out of
here. I've learned that if you post an article with a title like "What kind of
idiot do you think I am, anyway?" people will be very happy to tell you :)

1) Facebook is always welcome to contact me. Happy to help them try to provide
login help to the audience I've selected.

2) I don't have results yet, but I promise to post everything you could
possibly want to know about the site in a few months. At the slow rate of
traffic the site is getting, it's going to take a while to come to any useful
conclusions.

3) I don't know. I was going to make an extended metaphor and never really
finished it. I was trying to say that the average Facebooker isn't a college
kid or programmer any more. They're, well, _average_. I'll make the change in
the edits. This was something I thought about in the shower and just pushed it
out there. Wrote the whole thing in 15 minutes without any rewrites, which is
unusual for me. Very sorry for the poor quality.

4) Now this question is an awesome one. Riddle me this, batman, how do you use
a text-based search engine to provide assistance to people who can't read? If
you have no text, the search engine doesn't know what it's looking at. If you
have lots of text, people can't use it. If you hide the text, well, search
engines don't like that, either.

This was an initial stab. I'd like to try this again with another topic area,
but I'm stumped with the problem you bring up. Perhaps a totally video-based
site with extensive transcripts? It's worth exploring. You could even do the
navigation in video format.

I screwed this site up royally by personally writing the text. I should have
asked a elementary school kid to do it. Live and learn.

~~~
rrival
I'd be curious to see your stats on hn-books as well - it always seemed to me
like the "right" solution for a HN bookshelf would somehow involve
contributions to the EFF, or equiv.

------
blehn

      Now from where I sit, I can already hear the outrage. How could 
      I "domain squat" on Facebook?!? How could I be so 
      dastardly? Don't I know that I'm just polluting 
      the internet? What kind of trash am I?
    
      To those people, all I have to offer is my good intentions.
    

Wait, what? Good intentions? The top search result for "facebook login" (and
relevant misspellings) is facebook.com/login.php. That's what it should be.
Whatever your intentions are, you _are_ polluting the internet as far as I'm
concerned. I don't see any real benefit to anyone in doing this.

~~~
jrockway
He's not really polluting the Internet, right? Some people may want to read
about logging in to Facebook rather than actually doing it. (Learn by reading
instead of learn by doing.) His site is about that.

To me, there is no ethical issue here. It's a website with information about
stuff. Do I need information about said stuff? Nope. But apparently someone
does.

~~~
blehn
I don't see how having "information about stuff" qualifies a website as non-
polluting.

efreedom, mahalo — they have tons of information and are almost pure
pollution.

~~~
jrockway
We're not talking about efreedom and mahalo. They republish other people's
content (perhaps legally); this is original content.

Is this really more "pollution" than people's blogs about how they went
drinking with their friends last night?

~~~
blehn
Yes, because those blogs aren't located at drinking-with-my-friends-last-
night.com, and the posts don't reference "drinking" and "friends" a combined
61 times.

~~~
jrockway
So in order to register a domain name and start writing, someone needs your
approval in order to not be considered "pollution".

That makes sense.

~~~
blehn
I think you're missing the point. This guy saw a very common search term
("facebook login"), created a 15 page site with what is essentially a bunch of
filler and duplicate content that is absolutely _loaded_ with keyword spam.
Then he hosted it on multiple domains, selected because they are exact matches
for that term. The goal is clearly to rank well for those keywords, so that
uneducated users click on the search result and then click on adsense links on
the site. His claim that it's an "experiment" designed to benefit people is
total hogwash.

This type of practice is nothing new, and it's much closer to efreedom and
mahalo than it is to some guy writing about his new year's eve party on
blogger.

Again, his research shows no evidence that people are looking for anything
other than the login page for Facebook, which they are finding easily via
Google if they don't know how do use the address bar.

------
Encosia
I'm curious how the young ladies at the bottom of the page figure into helping
illiterate people access Facebook. It's tough to send a much stronger
spamminess signal.

~~~
pmorici
I was confused by that too esp since they don't appear to link to anything, so
whats the point? Maybe good taste correlates with literacy and the subtle
genius of that page is something that's lost on the book worms of the world.

Is it even possible to make something so ridiculously ugly by accident?

------
pmorici
Do illiterate people have a preference for ugly websites? Why not make it at
least not _look_ like a scam.

On another note, how many illiterate people do you suppose use ad blocking
software?

------
Sandman
What happens when people get past the login screen? If they need help with
logging in, how will they ever be able to actually use the site?

------
jcfrei
I like what he's doing. Running a few quality keyword targeted content sites
might be more lucrative and helpful than trying to invent the next facebook or
twitter. It's by no means as glorious or innovative, but it's pragmatic,
provides you with revenue and in his case might actually help some people.

~~~
btipling
Basically Mahalo's business plan.

------
purephase
I know it sounds snarky to ask, but how did that site take two weeks to put
together? There is not much to it.

------
eitland
Using firefox or chrome, if you just type facebook into the url field as far
as I know it will do a "I'm feeling lucky" search and send you to the first
website in the search results.

My guess is a lot of the "searches" for facebook or other well known brands
are not from computer illeterate people (they use bookmarks) but from lazy
people like me just typing the first part of it and hitting enter.

(If you use safari however and just type some domain name without the .tld
part you may be in for a surprise. From what I could see it just adds .com,
which may or may not be what you're looking for. IE used to be the same, but I
haven't seriously used it for a few years so I don't know.)

~~~
w1ntermute
> Using firefox or chrome, if you just type facebook into the url field as far
> as I know it will do a "I'm feeling lucky" search and send you to the first
> website in the search results.

Not really relevant. Most of these people are using IE, and I'm pretty sure it
doesn't have that feature.

------
aw3c2
Since you say you are doing it for a purely samaritan cause, could you "open"
it? For example share traffic statistics.

edit: Saw your answer to maxklein, thanks!

------
bambax
> _There are no tricks involved, although the site involves AdSense. (Which
> you never have to see if you use AdBlock or something like that)_

Is the target audience of that site likely to use AdBlock...?!?

Edit: my point is, it doesn't seem consistent with the stated goal of
"helping" those people to send them off on wild goose chases with ads (a
number of which may advertise the same kind of service).

------
cookiecaper
Interesting perspective.

I agree with maxklein that the login help page is not really helpful to your
target audience of illiterate people because of the preponderance of text.
It's also reasonable that your target audience probably is not using Facebook
all that much anyway.

Perhaps a more useful website would explain how to use the browser's address
bar or bookmarks? Then you won't be targeting literally illiterate people, but
just people who don't really know how computers works, which is a much larger
group than the group that can't actually read. You could also create "advanced
courses" that teach people not to use IE.

Not that something shouldn't be created for illiterate people, but I think
they'll need a solution that involves more of the stack than a simple login
help page, like an alternate interface for Facebook that emphasizes images
(something like what we see on consoles; Wii and Xbox Live both have very
visual interfaces) and has icons on the main tabs (video camera by videos,
worksheet by info, etc.).

------
sliverstorm
_I tried to include several versions of the misspellings_

How about Logon (Log on) instead of Login (Log in)?

I never really knew which was what was why.

~~~
magicofpi
I think it makes more sense for "log in" - there's even a site explaining why:
<http://loginisnotaverb.com/>

Basically, only "log in" makes sense as a verb (because could you say you
"logined"?). Although as a noun, it's okay.

------
lhnn
To those saying this guy is "polluting Google searches" and "infringing
copyrights of Facebook", etc.

1) Domain names are not in the domain of copyright/trademark; anyone who buys
it can have it.

2) Welcome to the freedom of the Internet. I'd have him polluting Google for a
thousand years before I'd consider forcing him to justify content on his
website.

------
u48998
I have a side question if anyone knows. How does Facebook know contacts from
my email address book even though I have not given them permission to search
friends in my email?

I created a fresh FB account, and right away saw suggested people showing up
in FB and these people are all in my Gmail address book. How is it possible
that FB know this?

~~~
slig
Your contacts have your email on their list, and they gave permission to
facebook look at it.

~~~
u48998
You mean, people in my email address book gave permission to FB to show
themselves up when I get on FB?

If this is correct, how do I prevent this for myself? How do I not give
permission to FB, prevent myself from showing up in someone else' FB profile
when they get on FB?

~~~
lwhalen
The only winning move, is not to play. Facebook-free even in 2011, and I still
have friends, a social life, and all the perks of 'being human', with none of
the Facebook privacy problems. :-)

~~~
u48998
The only reason I'm messing with it is because Nintendo DS XL has partnered
with FB to let me upload my photos to FB. I don't have a stinking SDHC card
reader and I need to take my photos out of this device.

------
elvirs
can anybody sum up the article for those who are too lazy to read the longest
version of a simple story.

