Confirmed: ReadWriteWeb Is NOT the New Facebook

Maybe ReadWriteWeb should increase the size of the "Read" in its logo. Its post Wednesday morning about Facebook friends being integrated into AOL Instant Messenger appeared at the top of Google's search results for "Facebook login," resulting in several confused Web surfers believing that the ReadWriteWeb post was actually the new Facebook page, and leaving some interesting comments, to boot: • Ok If I have to I will comment,I love facebook so right now just want to log in if thats ok with you..lol Keep up the good work... • ok cool now can I get to facebook • The new facebook sucks> NOW LET ME IN. • I WANT THE OLD FAFEBOOK BACK THIS SHIT IS WACK!!!!! • I just want to log in to Facebook - what with the red color and all? LOLLLOLOL!!!!!111 • This is such a mess I can't do a thing on my facebook .The changes you have made are ridiculous,I can't even login!!!!!I am very upset!!! • All I wanted to do was LOG IN TO MY FACE BOOK ACCOUNT! I don't like this new way! "If it an't broke why fix it?" • I am going to delete my account (IF I CAN EVER LOG IN) as this SUCKS BIG TIME ! If this does not get back to NORMAL you are going to lose a lot of folks who hate this and as you can see from all the comments they think it sucks too !!! facebook was great for connecting with old friends ...now, NOT SO MUCH. SO HOW DO I LOG IN ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? • im going back to my fuckin space u ass holes have to fuck up a good this !!!!! dumn asses • WHAT THE HELL IS GOIN ON WITH THIS FACEBOOK.. FIRST YOU WANNA CHARGE NA YOU WANNA NOT LET US LOG IN..... UGH STOP CHANGIN IT I LIKE THE OLD FB.... IF YOU ARE THE NEW OWNER YOU SUCK AND I WISH YOU WOULD CREATE UR OWN SHTY AND LEAVE FB ALONE LOSER......... Being at the top of Google's results is usually a goal, not a catastrophe. ReadWriteWeb followed up with a post late Wednesday night, Open Thread: The Internet Is Hard. Highlights: Earlier today, we had a runaway hit of a post that went viral within a few hours, getting unbelievable page views and hundreds of retweets and comments. The trouble was, it wasn't because of the post's content. Due to some interesting SEO magic, the post was one of the first search results for the term "Facebook login." As a result, hundreds of confused readers bombed us with angry comments about how much they hated the "new Facebook," a.k.a. our Facebook Connect comment login. Here are some valuable lessons we were taught today by the commenters on the thread. We'll employ the term "user" here to indicate the non-geeky, average person who uses the Web primarily as a way to navigate his or her real life. Feel free to disagree with this terminology or suggest new nomenclature in the comments. 1. Users don't care about what you care about. 2. Users don't read your copy or look at your branding. Banners, logos, carefully crafted wordsmithery -- this is all filler, we've found out. Users have been calloused by 15 or so years of surfing through bad ads and marketing babble, and they are unconsciously tuning out everything but the one thing they came to find. For example, none of the 200 or so confused Facebook users who commented on our earlier post read the post itself, the huge logo at the top of the page, the many links to non-Facebook-related content or the huge, all-bold paragraph about how ReadWriteWeb is not, in fact, some ill-conceived redesign of Facebook. They simply searched for "Facebook login" and, upon navigating to our site, scrolled until they found the one button they wanted to click. Which brings us to our third assertion. 3. Users gravitate toward the simple and the familiar. A ton of the confused commenters scrolled down far enough to find the Facebook Connect button for logging into the comments section -- as evinced by the fact that their Facebook profiles were then linked to their comments. 4. Users rule the Internet. Finally, this is the reason we've stopped mocking the poor folks who left those comments long enough to write this post.

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Confirmed: ReadWriteWeb Is NOT the New Facebook

David Cohen

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David Cohen