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Daring Fireball: "Facebook login"

daringfireball.net

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Re: Daring Fireball: "Facebook login"

#51

Post by derefr »

patio11 wrote: post #36
natemartin wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course if your app is aimed at educated people, such as a tool for engineers, you get a nicely self-selected group and can avoid these problems. But you'll never get to facebook-level with a niche audience like that. It certainly avoids some of the problems with dealing with stupidity though.

Educated people... can avoid these problems. I have a user population with 50% masters degrees which disagrees with you. Violently.

Perhaps they have managed to get a Master's without actually becoming "educated." It's not like it's not possible—you can become an expert in a very deep-yet-narrow field without ever having to learn how to think and problem-solve in the general case (which is what a liberal arts degree was supposed to be for.)

Re: Daring Fireball: "Facebook login"

#52

Post by madair »

Groxx wrote: post #24
thaumaturgy wrote: post #10

My current primary business is IT consulting, which really means that I spend most of my time working face-to-face with people that have trouble with computers and technology in general. So, this kind of behavior isn't news to me. In fact, I've tried often to convince the tech-savvy that most users have problems like this, and I've never been all that successful. The RWW "Facebook login" is great from this standpoint…

...most of these are good people, and many of them have accomplished more in their lives than many of the denigrating commenters ever will. While true, I'll still be prejudiced against people that leave comments like (#14): wtf is this bullshttttttttttt all about. can i get n plzzzzzzzzz and I'll actively argue that many who spell and act this poorly in public are probably at least as much of a detriment to society a…

Prejudice (1) : preconceived judgment or opinion (2) : an adverse opinion or leaning formed without just grounds or before sufficient knowledge

Yep, sounds like you are prejudiced.

Re: Daring Fireball: "Facebook login"

#53

Post by robryan »

Timothee wrote: post #7
jrockway wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I don't get too excited about Internet entrepreneurship. In order to be successful, you have to appeal to this type of person. And I don't want to. (Is there even a single comment there written in correct written English? I don't see one; everything is misspelled, mis-capitalized, or just plain incomprehensible. Depressing! So very depressing!)

We were talking about that at lunch and saying how we don't have the same mindset as "regular" people. For example, I just never ever click on ads. But many many people do. Similarly, I'm very reluctant to pay for virtual goods (in games mostly), especially when I know that what they provide is just a very simple programming trick (e.g. a game site selling "pens" to write in different colors in chatrooms) I agree tha…

Depends what virtual good your paying for, more content in a game I'm spending a lot of time playing would be worth it, although I don't see myself liking any of the flash app games on that level.

Google ads can be useful from time to time, random ads not really, I think most of the random ads I click on are non purchase interesting looking things or ads for physical stores I know because they have a decent deal in the ad.

Re: Daring Fireball: "Facebook login"

#54

Post by pyre »

patio11 wrote: post #50
pyre wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that the point is that there is not a single product at work here, but multiple products from different vendors. Facebook can't improve their interface to make users not type "facebook login" into Google as a way of accessing their site.

That is a failure of the imagination. They certainly could -- whether it is worth doing or not is another question, but hey, that is what God gave us A/B testing to figure out. "Hey user, it looks like you came to us today from Google searching for [Facebook login]. Did you know that there is a better way? Type facebook.com into [blah blah blah]. Try it now and we'll give you 5 free credits for [without loss of gener…

Well played.

Re: Daring Fireball: "Facebook login"

#55

Post by blasdel »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #32
fragmede wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a terrible cook, but if I was baking a cake, and used laundry detergent instead of flour (I mean, they're both white and powdery...) I'd absolutely deserve any comments about my (lack-of) intelligence. The "News results for facebook login" section on Google is very clearly marked, with, umm, well theres a picture, and a bit of indentation? In this case, I must lay some blame on Google for putting laundry detergen…

This isn't Google's fault. In Firefox, if you type a non-address directly into the address bar, it automagically directs you to the top Google hit for that query. The real failure here is Mozilla, for releasing a "feature" that, as usual, appeals to computer power users, and royally fucks over computer novices.

It's much, much worse on the GTK version of Firefox -- inspired by the X default of mouse3==paste, on such platforms they make the middlemouse.contentLoadURL config default to true.

This means that if you middle click anywhere in the window that isn't a link, it instantly redirects you to the "I'm feeling lucky" result for the contents of the last text selection you made. I cannot think of a single creepier usability clusterfuck.

Added fun: until a few years ago, http://www.microsoft.com was the first google search result for "http". This meant that malformed links (missing the colon, for instance) almost always pointed directly to Microsoft, on all platforms. It's a bit less baffling than it used to be, as not the wikipedia article on HTTP is the first result.

Re: Daring Fireball: "Facebook login"

#56

Post by tinotopia »

Netflix used to make it very difficult to find any of their customer service contact addresses or phone numbers.

I have an old blog post with a title that includes the word 'Netflix' and the phrase 'Customer Service', where I ramble on about a whole bunch of things; the content of the post is about a general principle that I think Netflix was illustrating, not about Netflix itself. The title, though, resulted in the post showing up high in search results for 'Netflix customer service'.

Three people attempted to address Netflix customer service via the comments box; one of them posted his phone number. Another posted his postal address and credit card information.

I posted a comment making it explicit that all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, this blog post was not, in fact, Netflix customer service HQ.

A year later another guy posted another Netflix customer service request, right under my 'This is not Netflix' message.

Re: Daring Fireball: "Facebook login"

#57

Post by lmkg »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #38
Groxx wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, to them, the directions, or that pop up, is just more words on the screen. It's one of the main problems with user interface for the really tech-inept. It's a fundamentally hard problem, because you don't know what they're expecting, and you can't predict it 100% of the time. That said though, most programmery-types are problem-solvers at heart, and would be looking for information when their car broke down. Many…

Yeah. I get where you're coming from, but my attitude's changed a bit over the last couple of years because of my business. I now think that most of those people aren't really uninquisitive, they're just busy. They have more pressing concerns than some new tech toy or gadget. I've even noticed myself getting to be that way, which I don't like. For example, when Windows 7 was coming out, I didn't think, "Oh neat, some…

My experience is not that it's a matter of being busy, or even lazy. These people have simply convinced themselves that working with computers is hard. They got lost because they assume they'll get lost. They stop at an error message not because it takes two minutes, but because they assume dealing with the task is insurmountable. It's almost like testing anxiety--they think they're going to fail, so they fail, and it entrenches a response of frustration for no rational reason.

Re: Daring Fireball: "Facebook login"

#58

Post by fragmede »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #32
fragmede wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a terrible cook, but if I was baking a cake, and used laundry detergent instead of flour (I mean, they're both white and powdery...) I'd absolutely deserve any comments about my (lack-of) intelligence. The "News results for facebook login" section on Google is very clearly marked, with, umm, well theres a picture, and a bit of indentation? In this case, I must lay some blame on Google for putting laundry detergen…

This isn't Google's fault. In Firefox, if you type a non-address directly into the address bar, it automagically directs you to the top Google hit for that query. The real failure here is Mozilla, for releasing a "feature" that, as usual, appeals to computer power users, and royally fucks over computer novices.

I didn't say it was solely Google's fault; you make a good point re:Mozilla/Firefox, but they're both complicit. Google is the one that added the 'feature' to show recent news at the top, instead of just search results, and Mozilla is the one that added the feature you noted.

However, what leads you to conclude they're using the address bar? The default Firefox homepage is a Google search page. You open a Firefox window and start typing and the text will be entered in the main text box on a Google search page.

I'd actually argue that Firefox's awesome bar feature is actually _for_ computer novices. Start typing 'facebook login' and before you even hunt-and-peck your way to the double O it shows a list of Facebook related pages.

Hell, what's got me confused is type in "facebook" into the Firefox address bar and press enter. It goes to http://www.facebook.com. I'm curious then - why add the "login"? (That they should be forcing ssl is a whole 'nother problem.)

Re: Daring Fireball: "Facebook login"

#59

Post by pyre »

ubernostrum wrote: post #31
autarch wrote: post #6

I'm sure _most_ Facebook users don't do this, but enough do to make for great hilarity in this particular case. This is all hilarious, but there's no reason to assume it's statistically significant.

Seeing as this phenomenon -- even to the point of people literally typing URLs into Google and then clicking the first result -- is old, well-known and well-documented, I'm gonna guess you need to broaden your usability reading. Here, for example, is an article from 2007 pointing out that the top search term on Google was... "Yahoo": http://www.dailydomainer.com/200742-yahoo-top-search-term-on... Here's Jeremy Zawodn…

Yea, but people also have to fail at understanding the bookmarking functionality of browsers as well. You don't have to understand the location/address bar to understand that you can bookmark a page to come back to it.

Re: Daring Fireball: "Facebook login"

#60

Post by Groxx »

madair wrote: post #52
Groxx wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...most of these are good people, and many of them have accomplished more in their lives than many of the denigrating commenters ever will. While true, I'll still be prejudiced against people that leave comments like (#14): wtf is this bullshttttttttttt all about. can i get n plzzzzzzzzz and I'll actively argue that many who spell and act this poorly in public are probably at least as much of a detriment to society a…

Prejudice (1) : preconceived judgment or opinion (2) : an adverse opinion or leaning formed without just grounds or before sufficient knowledge Yep, sounds like you are prejudiced.

I did just admit it. Many of the worst-behavers I've encountered act similarly or worse on the internet, and the reverse has been quite accurate for the few I've encountered in that manner. It's certainly prejudice, but that doesn't make it wholly (or even mostly) invalid.

Prejudices have a prejudiced opinion applied to them. That snarling dog? It may not bite you, but it's rational to be prejudiced towards believing it may harm you. Though it may often be wrong, it proves valuable in the long run. The same goes for the person with a knife out, glaring at you, looking drunk. It could be totally harmless, but it may not be. By all means, go into the dark alley with them if you are wholly against prejudice.

Unless, of course, they're never examined. They can be wrong or detrimental just like anything else. But broken down, all rational behavior towards anything alive is effectively prejudice, because you can't have sufficient knowledge to predict it perfectly.

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