

Amusing Comment Thread - jolie
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_wants_to_be_your_one_true_login.php#comments

======
zachware
Sure, this is hilarious. Take a moment to think about what it means. We all
live in a bubble where the web is easy, where we can always find what we're
looking for.

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.

~~~
tesseract
On the one hand I do think that there is a long way to go in improving the
usability of computer applications, and that "computer illiteracy" is to some
extent merely a symptom of the fact that user interfaces aren't good enough
yet.

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.

~~~
thwarted
Not just education, but actually _wanting_ to learn. This is what bothers me
about the position that computers need to be made easier because people just
want to get their work done, they don't want to use computers. Well, tough,
you have to learn at least something about a tool in order to be effective at
it, otherwise, you're going to have problems. So while it's good to work
towards a usable interface that is straight forward, easy to use, doesn't get
in the user's way and is easy to understand, there is a limit beyond which you
have diminishing returns.

------
tdog123
It's always good for us designers to get a reminder of the computer skills of
the general public. People do not read: headers, urls, titles, or much of
anything for that matter.

~~~
itistoday
I think this situation illustrates perfectly that there's _nothing_ you can do
for some people. As they say, "Make it foolproof, and the world will come up
with a better fool."

~~~
eston
I've never heard that saying before. SO, SO true.

------
blasdel
I WANT TO TAKE GOOGLES OFF OF MY HOME PAGE:
[http://okcancel.com/archives/link/2004/09/google-answers-
hci...](http://okcancel.com/archives/link/2004/09/google-answers-hci-phd-
program.html)

~~~
dangrover
This is even better: <http://cancelgoogle.com/>

------
yungchin
Funny. But can you explain how all those people ended up there? It's not like
that's the first hit on Google/Bing, or?

~~~
jolie
We've determined it's people searching for "facebook login" on Google,
according to our traffic stats.

Author Mike Melanson, Inadvertent SEO Superstar

~~~
natep
And it's not a new phenomenon[1], but it might be the first time it's
backfired.

[1] <http://www.google.com/trends?q=facebook%2C+facebook+login>

~~~
jolie
Backfired... are you kidding? This is comedy gold! ;)

------
kes
The page has been updated:

" _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._ "

~~~
jolie
We also just added a link directly to Facebook.com. I'm not sure how some of
these people had the wherewithal to sign up for Facebook accounts in the first
place.

------
Jeema
Right now in a parallel universe, ReadWriteWeb users are trying desperately to
log in through some website called Facebook...

------
nathanwdavis
This looks oddly familiar.... That's it - YouTube comments.

~~~
ax0n
Beat me to it. That is precisely what it reminded me of. Most comments ever
does not equal best comment thread ever. Of course, by the end of it, I'm
pretty sure people were just trolling.

------
gorm
No wonder Facebook support never responds

------
subpixel
These are people who installed IE from a disk their ISP gave them. Their
homepage is comcast.net or something similar. And that homepage must have
featured a headline for several hours that linked to this article. I bet the
headline was truncated to "Facebook Log-in..." or something. I'm just waiting
for my mom to call to ask what's wrong with Facebook.

------
simon_
Comment 72: "The new facebook is ok"

~~~
itistoday
Comment 103: "This reminds me of an article I read recently about the ever-
escalating rate of illiteracy in America. It makes you wonder how these people
ever make it down the street alive, much less how they are able to log into
Facebook."

------
jfarmer
I have a pretty popular Facebook app. Since the redesign I've been flooded
with complaint emails: "Bring back the old Facebook!!!!", "Why did you change
it your !@#*&@#ing idiot?!", etc.

Pretty funny.

~~~
tokenadult
Do you forward those to Facebook?

That looks like a task an automated filter could do.

~~~
jfarmer
Facebook gets every complaint I get and it goes into their ticketing system.
This is what they use to investigate potentially abusive apps.

------
coryl
Oh man, that was entertaining. They're all old people judging by their profile
pics.

~~~
datasink
<http://www.facebook.com/people/Myra-Cooper/100000171960096>

This was the first profile I clicked on. I am speechless.

~~~
jayair
Oh come on guys don't be mean!

------
Erwin
To post a comment the first option you can select is "Optional: Sign in with
Facebook" which opens a Facebook login window. Which is why most of those
commenters had that [f] in their comments.

So perhaps they thought they were somehow logging into Facebook but while they
were really doing some kind of remote authentication.

~~~
ericabiz
This comment thread makes me realize why phishing is so prevalent.

------
hackoder
To keep the entertainment going, lets all do our part and promote the
article's link up in google's search results for 'facebook' and 'facebook
login' :)

------
barryrandall
I'm really trying to give the commenters the benefit of the doubt. In their
defense, Facebook was gradually rolling out a new design that its users seem
to despise. That, combined with a usage spike from massive snowstorms
(school/work closings, closed roads), explains some of the desperation. I
hope.

This is also exposes a massive downside to implementing Facebook connect.

------
ellyagg
My favorite: "The new facebook is ok" ... like Facebook turning into RWW isn't
all bad.

(lifted from one of the sane comments)

------
natrius
I blame Google for this, not the users. Google knows a large portion of its
users use the "search" box for navigation. They should do a better job of
accommodating that use case. It should be fairly easy to tell that a search
for "facebook login" is likely a navigation query, and display a huge "Login
to Facebook" button at the top.

------
strongsauce
it seems like what is happening is they are typing, "facebook login" into
google, then they click the first link, which is "news results for facebook
login", the first link on that page is the RWW article.

------
yread
So many computer illiterate people in one comment thread :) And they all read
readwriteweb.com!

~~~
jolie
...and we thought our readers were so intellectual. ;)

~~~
Vivtek
My wife is a theoretical physicist and she also types the names of sites into
the search bar to get to them. The concept of a URL is so orthogonal to her
reality that it just hasn't registered yet.

Not that I'm saying those commenters are theoretical physicists, but ... the
bubble theory is a pretty strong one.

------
hasanove
interestingly enough, some of them seem to like this "new facebook" :D

------
nathanwdavis
wow!!, they sound like grumpy prisoners who want into the rec room.

~~~
jayair
Everybody except one guy that said "Looking good". In all seriousness I feel
bad for them.

------
og1
Is this chatroulette community version?

------
petervandijck
No, this one is: [http://poorbuthappy.com/colombia/post/more-photos-and-
memora...](http://poorbuthappy.com/colombia/post/more-photos-and-memorabilia-
from-colombias-past/)

------
rglullis
Flagged.

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.

~~~
rglullis
Really? Down to -2 when I post this. I would like to know what is so offensive
about my comment.

~~~
jolie
I work at RWW, and I just thought the thread was too funny to not share. Sorry
your comment got voted down =/

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.

