Still, now I have a nice long list of people to start my new Nigerian money scam with, so thanks!

If your parking lot liked to "customize" it's lot numbers while you were away, then it might be an appropriate analogy.

Well guess what, we are succeeding and the consequences are ever present in the "golden" thread. People are reverting back to infancy by crying and screaming when they do not understand something instead of taking the time to use the skills they were given in childhood to deal with the unknown.

If you make things too simple, then people will never learn. Why do you think when we teach kids math that we do not just hand them a calculator?

I agree that Google needs to work on the way it sorts search results. It could be improved to be more useful and I'm sure that it will but I don't agree that it 'failed' anybody.

It's like saying that a shop is to blame by having a special display on bleach next to a display of lemonade at the front of the store. Sure, it's not very well thought-out but if you buy that bleach and then go home and drink it - despite the label saying clearly that it is bleach - you only have yourself to blame.

wtf?

Dense people are dense. There's no remedy for someone that doesn't even know how to type www.facebook.com

Isn't Googles fault. Don't be lazy and just click the first highest link.

Seriously. One guy actually posted his email & password, and most of his CC info? You can't blame Google for basic stupidity.

http://www.khabrein.info/index.php?do=news_detail&news_id=c56ad648c2e3b13bcf2c7980f8670e7e

Maybe, before the morning of February 10, people could type "facebook" into the Google box (or even use their address bar!), go to a facebook page where their login box was smack dab right in the middle of the page. On this particular morning, perhaps, the box disappeared. Imagine it was replaced with the "Welcome to Facebook" page with a map of the USA with people with dotted lines next to it. The login was there... just in a different place.

Quote from page 3 of the epic comment page:

"I understood the old Facebook interface. The UI is not user friendly and difficult to navigate. The new interface has some kind of atlas-like graphic with icons that look like little people with dotted lines between them. Tried clicking on those but they don't do anything. Where do I enter my password for authentication, that is a challenge."

So, these people may have understood where they were trying to go, but since they couldn't login right away with the nonexistent box right in the middle of the page, they typed in "facebook login" into Google. This may have been the first hit initially, but because people had already learned with their previous experience that they "couldn't" login on the "Welcome to Facebook" page, they went down the search list and started clicking on the RWW page. It probably got so many hits so fast that it outpaced clicks on true Facebook sites, and Google (taking note of a new "desire") put the RWW page first. This likely led to continued frenzied mistaken posting.

Anyone still with me? It made sense in my head, but it was kinda hard to explain well. I think this may have been what happened--a series of unfortunate events starting with Facebook changing the login style of their main page.

Facebook can take a bigger portion of the blame in my opinion, it makes things very easy for it's users then leaves them out on their own once they hit google. Why do they not "own" the top spot in the search for anything facebook? Why are they not even attempting to teach their users about online security for their facebook accounts? More than any other website they are in a position where they have an enormous amount of information about their users, yet unlike other sites they don't even have basic security notices("never login to your facebook page from any site other than www.facebook.com" would be a start).

They don't warn their users when they are being redirected to another site either(sounds obvious to most people, but all it takes is a nice fake login page linked on someones facebook wall and it's safe to say a lot of people use the same email address for facebook as they do for banking, etc. and often with the same password) and given that just by looking at the comments on your previous blog entry, the rest of us can see that a lot of facebook users are not remotely internet savvy, it's about time the site that's collecting so much data on it's users uses that information to protect them.

It's easy to sit here and mock people for being "too dumb" to use the internet, but back when computers generally didn't have a nice easy to use UI with pretty icons and lots of hand-guiding a lot of the people mocking others here wouldn't have been any good with computers either, it's only because you know how to do it that it becomes easy.

I'm new to your blog, Mike, so I don't know if you've come across the mac application "Fluid"(http://fluidapp.com/ before, but I with the recent confusion I think it's an idea that could be easily geared at the less-savvy internet user in future(if they ever make a windows version anyway). It essentially creates a mini web browser for sites you choose and allows you to keep shortcuts on your desktop(just double click the facebook shortcut, mum!).

((Please forgive my grammar/punctuation errors, I hope I've caught them all but it's not my strong point))

This was not a tiny, tiny subsection of computer users, this was a massive influx of traffic that is out there happening every day.

When you play video games, you get to chose easy, medium or hard - maybe we should offer that for not only browsers, but search results and even operating systems?

should google have to molycoddle these idiots? no google is too good and makes eneough money it does not.

These twats are still using IE, I hope they loose all their money in a phising scam and then think they go slapped with a fish or some other utterly idiotic misunderstanding of what is going on.

"Looks like I landed on ReadWriteWeb.com where do I log into facebook?"
haha dub tee eff

If someone wants to login to a site, they should use their browser to go to that site.

If they want to FIND a site, the reasonable thing to search for is the name of the site.

If someone wants to find outside information ABOUT a site, then the reasonable search terms would be the name of the site, and the information sought.

So, a search for "facebook login" ought to be someone looking for information about logging in on facebook, not facebook itself. So, it would be perfectly reasonable for a news article to be on top.

Logging into a regularly visited site by doing a Google search for their login page is mentally equivalent to going downtown to ask for directions to your corner store.

"How stupid RWW writers are that how they fail to understand basic SEM, and the new adjustments being made to accomodate algorithms to support real-time search. IE - don't use "FACEBOOK" and "LOGIN" as a headline and then pepper the story with both Key terms! Search engines work based on text."

So let me get this straight: its RWW's fault for using popular nouns and verbs? How would you suggest they discuss this issue without using those words?

So if ten million people call 911 to order a pizza, they should have one delivered by ambulance?

Itz shat you get used something to.

You link to the front page of the blog: http://suppertimesonnets.blogspot.com/

instead of the article you wanted to quote: http://suppertimesonnets.blogspot.com/2010/02/in-which-mockery-is-i-hope-gently.html

Works fine now, but as soon as the author updates the blog, pushing the article down the page, your link will make no sense.

Research has shown that an smart dog has the intelligence of a 4 or 5 year old - I think this means that the Internet and OS's in general have been improved to the point that a 4 yer old can use them. The side effect is that many with that much intelligence are now leaving comments on this thread and the previous.

Its also unfortunate that some are using this for the opportunity of feeling better by battering others for making mistakes. Always a mistake IMHO.

LinkedIn Marketing Strategy

On the other hand, it's unfair (if momentarily hilarious and gratifying) to attribute this to hordes of mouth-breathers. C'mon, really? You never make boneheaded mistakes? This particular mistake isn't one I'd be likely to make, because I work in this field, but I have my moments.

I used to have a phone number that was really close to that of the late Sen. Paul Wellstone's local office. We'd get calls for him all the time. Most people realized their error right away, but once in a while, no matter what ridiculous thing we put on our answering machine, someone would leave a message for him. One guy complained, outraged, that our "Senator Wellstone Opinion Line" (replete with Playskool farm animal sound effects and other drollery) was unbecoming and unprofessional. We laughed about that one for a long, long time. Was the guy an idiot? It's possible, but he didn't sound like one. More likely, he was calling to voice an opinion about foreign policy, or whatever, and this task was being given only a small amount of his attention, and that the mere phrase "Senator Wellstone" was enough to eliminate for him the possibility that he was in the wrong place.

Some people truly are dim. But even the brightest people are situationally stupid. All the ridicule makes me think of the Jay Leno bit where he goes around and asks people who the president is until he finds a few who freeze in front of the camera and can't answer. You never see the ones who get it right.

You wouldn't believe some of the clumsiness on the site. Some users would search on the retailer's name (using the search box ON the retailer's site). Other users would arrive at the site from Google, and then search on 'Google' (like they were trying to get back to Google), or 'Britney Spears' (as though they'd never left Google in the first place).

Many people have no idea what things are, e.g the difference between an OS, a browser, and a website. It's just a 'computer' that is 'online'.

Blows my mind, but anyway.

http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/39735

I wonder if people were clicking on the news link, which was first for some time in that "news results for facebook login" section at the top.

But still, -damn- this was classic.

The real way that Google is failing the user, however, is by sending people typing "facebook login" to a search page rather than directly to the facebook login page. The user intent is clear.

"you guys are really stupid THIS IS A BLOG POST NOT THE REAL FACEBOOK if you want to login go to www.facebook.com assholes"

Why get angry and abusive at confused people like that?

So, while their information ended up in a safe place this time, it obviously isn't hard to pry it out of their hands if a big red site can get them to release info they usually only give to a big blue site.

If they can't even tell they're at the wrong page by the 100% different content, how do you think they react to a perfectly crafted banking login site?

"OMG WHERE IS THE LOGIN BOX I NEED TO TYPE MY LOGIN INFO SOMEWHERE!!!!!"

(Ironic that they ended up at Read Write Web - given they seem to be challenged on all three counts!)

My favorite part of this is that when you share posts on facebook using networked blogs, it aggregates everyone's wall comments about it. So sharing this post created a mini-clusterf*ck of comments asking who all the random people writing on their walls are.

Hilarious!

(Ironic that they ended up at Read Write Web - given they seem to be challenged on all three counts!)

My favorite part of this is that when you share posts on facebook using networked blogs, it aggregates everyone's wall comments about it. So sharing this post created a mini-clusterf*ck of comments asking who all the random people writing on their walls are.

Hilarious!

No, but seriously, Google's PageRank has never been about context or relevance, and the whole pseudo-science of SEO/SEM is about playing with volume and density to cheat your way into the top 5 results on SERPs (Hello, Demand Media!).

Google's desperate plunge into real-time and personalized search only makes the whole thing even wonkier and more unpredictable. Future generations will look back on Google search as a very primitive stab at organizing the world's information.

For fun, I just Googled "my stomach hurts." Result #8 was from Urban Dictionary and enjoined me to do the following: "you have to go to the bathroom and crap."

Brilliant, simply brilliant!

http://ericaglasier.com/2010/02/12/oversocialized-the-social-media-meta-cliques-pick-their-new-bffs/

SCORE!1!!

Maybe y'all ought to quit "designing and developing for the lowest common denominator" and focus instead on teaching users to use your "thingy."

If I can learn this Internet stuff anybody can. Ya jus' gotta teach 'em how. We ain't talkin' rocket science here, are we?

"In the case of a web browser you might have a picture of the browser window with the location bar circled in red with a red arrow pointing to it and red text reading Type where you want the browser to go here!"

In other words I think issues like this could easily be remedied by education, like a graphical "cheat sheet." I, a non-tech-minded person, managed to pass 7th grade chemistry because Mr. Nadrowski drew and labelled pictures of atoms and molecules on the blackboard.

If you want to use the road sign analogy, you have to take into account the fact that roadsigns merely point to a location. They don't display the actual address of that location. Google does. You can't lay the blame at Google's feet if users are too stupid/ignorant/retarded to comprehend what urls are/how they work.

thanks!

Google's already shown that the common man-on-the-street can't distinguish the browser from a search engine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ. I don't think this is a failure of Google. The algorithm gives users access to long-tail content just as easy as news aggregation. Google has stepped up the news area as traditional journalism changes to more citizen journalism.

These users have only been using the tools we've given them and have adapted. Think of all the things this highlights that users have just filtered out as noise: address bar, color schemes, link description, etc. Google's not to blame, those of us who make Websites and craft user experience are. We've been designing and developing for the lowest common denominator for so long, we've inadvertently gotten them to the point that RWW can be confused for Facebook!

This is just so wrong it makes me want to cry. Google is not responsible for wiping the asses of the hordes of sub-literate monotremes WHO CANNOT DISTINGUISH ONE WEBSITE FROM ANOTHER.

The colour and design differences on readwriteweb.com and facebook.com must deter the majority

Only a minority of those still confused would bother to leave comments.

Also, many would have typed "Facebook" as a single word, without the "Login" as their term - but they would have been successful following the top result.

This story illustrates that a minority of a minority of a minority of 400 million active users is still a large, large number.

I can see a pimple-faced geek sitting in a data center somewhere, wringing his hands like Dr. No... knyuck-knyuck-knyuck... that'll fix facebook for taking our traffic!

But when can I login to facebook?

"This is a failure to read, think and act- a failure of critical thinking."

I think it has to do with the fact that "the rest of them" is using computers (or Google!) like they are using a TV, i.e. with brain off!

But the computers we know until now were designed to be used with the brain on…
I'd say _constantly_ on.

"I hope we (who create this new world) realize that there aren't many of "us", but a whole bunch of "them" and our success depends ultimately on their success."

@ Michael:

"people don't even know what a browser is. to them, the internet is google, because it's their jump-off point when they click the "e" on their desktop. they don't use short cuts and don't know that there's an enter button. seriously, the iPad can't come soon enough."

That's why I wrote an article before the introduction of the iPad, sayin' that it was the computer "the rest of them" was waiting for!

http://www.micmac.com/2010/01/27/the-rest-of-them/

http://tech.phreadz.com/x/9G3JA4GF9M/

;0

What's worse they repeat this more than once…

But seriously, don't you think it would be better if people actually used their brain to process the text that goes before their eyes?

Google is a machine. It does not discriminate. There are millions of queries where the first (or second, third) is not what you want. And for every such example, there's a percentage of users who act like automatons. I have my little example - on:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=live+coverage+wikimapia
My worthless blog post comes forth:
http://yishaym.wordpress.com/2006/07/22/live-coverage-on-wikimapia/
and that's after I made it private (I switched in back just now).

The thing is, "the number of people searching for live coverage wikimapia" x "percentage of people behaving like automata" is much smaller than the same equation with "facebook login", plus my little blog generally doesn't get that much attention.

So, in short, it's not a bug. It's a feature of dynamic systems. Enjoy.

What will you do to keep your little brother safe in the world?

Would you start controlling what clothes everyone in the world wears? Perhaps you could get some really rare and unusual clothes for the few people in his life that he needs to trust.

I'm thinking you've either got to
a) teach him a way to compensate for his disability, or
b) don't let him go out alone.

Maybe Google, in a sense, tries to follow option b. But how can we leave that responsibility in Google's hands?

I think there are points where UI's need to force (or at least nudge) people to understand what's going on. I'm not saying to make it hard, but ideally a "self-explanatory" UI will promote understanding, not just get someone blindly to where they want to go at the moment.

Most people don't need to understand every layer of the OSI model, but they really DO need to know how to recognize the IDENTITY of who they're interacting with online. Right now, URI's are the mechanism for that, and that's hardly Google's fault.

Google seeming to read our minds is cool, but to some extent it's the problem, not the solution. Consider that real human intelligence is not perfectly reliable. That's part of what makes it human. The more human we make artificial intelligence, the more it will be subject to human-like unpredictability.

Now, is there anyone that everytime he calls a friend calls the operator to be put through instead of dialing his number? I do think it is merely a problem of "young internet", which has to be solved both by better websites and educators (whichever way).

Best regards
Jupe

I'm think too

Maybe if Google stopped trying to be everyone else with things like Buzz and Wave they might pay attention to what we all loved them for in the first place.

Just Google.

@ThompsonPaul - The Google search for "facebook login" should look pretty much the same as it did yesterday.

The Google search returns give clear information to distinguish which is which amongst the first search returns. The issue here is that users are simply blindly following the first thing they see rather than making a cognitive decision about where to go. No wonder phishing sites are so successful. The problem is that with kids outside their environment we teach them, "don't talk to strangers" etc, but adults don't educate themselves in the same way or don't know where to look. This is the failure on Google/MS/Yahoo's part.

Paul

Chrome has taken a stab at this with its array of sites you commonly go to. Open Chrome, click big box that looks like Facebook, or whatever, and bang you are there. No messing about with address bars, urls, bookmarks, etc.

But why even make it take two steps? Why is the OS so dumb that it can't figure out that the user goes to Facebook quite often if not all the time and make a big button that says Facebook right on the desktop? One click or double click and there you go, you are right where you go every morning or evening.

This is UI design issue that goes way beyond search engines. It goes right to the core of how computers should work.

The browser and app developers could also get more user friendly, so the "blame" can be spread around quite a bit.
From that comment thread it looks like people took the easy way out and clicked on the the first FB search mention with "login" rather than using the browser address bar, a bookmark or if they are heavy users could have dragged the url into the toolbar. Maybe the developers just thought people would discover it on their own

Chrome has taken a stab at this with its array of sites you commonly go to. Open Chrome, click big box that looks like Facebook, or whatever, and bang you are there. No messing about with address bars, urls, bookmarks, etc.

But why even make it take two steps? Why is the OS so dumb that it can't figure out that the user goes to Facebook quite often if not all the time and make a big button that says Facebook right on the desktop? One click or double click and there you go, you are right where you go every morning or evening.

This is UI design issue that goes way beyond search engines. It goes right to the core of how computers should work.

1.) How stupid RWW writers are that how they fail to understand basic SEM, and the new adjustments being made to accomodate algorithms to support real-time search. IE - don't use "FACEBOOK" and "LOGIN" as a headline and then pepper the story with both Key terms! Search engines work based on text.

and...

2.) How idiotic people are to not actually skim the search results before not only clicking, but commenting upon realizing that you're just a poorly thought out blog that has nothing to do with their logins.

Sadly, I can't decide who is dumber.

PS - Don't flatter yourselves and think you've started a meme.

PPS - Look over your links, it bush league when you can't properly hyperlink. (HINT: "that" -- they've probably changed it by the time you're reading this.)

Learn how the internet works before you write about it.

You have a point. I remember when the internet was "invented" circa the early '90s. Many people equated the internet to Netscape: They were one and the same. I suppose many people today feel that Google is the gateway to the internet; URL's are just like zip codes that only Google controls, designates and drives traffic to. But how do browser developer's contribute to the basic understanding of the web to this user base? I mean I figured Dot Com (someaddress.com) was understood by "all" by now to be a unique identifier to an specific slice of the web that was controlled and maintained by "someone".

Maybe we need revisit ad campaigns circa 1997: When evert ad on TV and radio highlighted their URL in the promotion. Wow, what a sweet position Google is in? Defining the destination of so many internet users?!?!?

How do I log on and check my pokes!!!!!!!

It only proves a larger point I have thought about facebook and its users. You gotta be stupid to be using it (or not).

Be nice to see where the lost cybersouls hail from. (US, UK, Brazil, where??)

It seems then it isn't Google that has failed anyone, it's the browser authors. Google becomes the net, the net becomes Google. But the address bar is where you enter a URL.

Reminds me of the old military rhyme. "This is a rifle, this is a gun, one is for fighting...

I just tried Google again. Facebook is the first search result, but above it is the article here, as the top NEWS article for the search. I didn't notice News results on Bing, but I really don't use that and am not familiar with how it works. Yahoo! put News results a couple of entries below the main results, which were Facebook.

There is a serious issue here. If people mistype, they could end up with anything. Why they aren't using a bookmark is beyond me. Even typing in the URL bar would make more sense than searching each time, especially if the history comes up and they can choose from that. I think a lot of the problem is that people don't really understand the internet and how to use it efficiently.

I'm a librarian. I deal with such basic misunderstandings of the internet/web/computer issues all the time. A lot of people don't quite get it and that includes folks who are on it all the time.

All the tech community buzz about the importance of "real time" has convinced the powers that be in the Googleplex that real-time results are really important to users, and should be surfaced above other, more evergreen search results.

That's fine when you're searching for "haiti earthquake" or "sarah palin notes on hand." But for the average web search by the average user, timeliness does not necessarily equate to relevance. That's what happened here.

Its time to re examine search....I think that it is broken and that we have reached a wall with what can be done with the large amount of unstructured content on the internet.

http://www.factoetum.com/factoetum/Giant_Global_Graph_(Technology_Term)

So perhaps they thought they were signing into Facebook, and didn't realise they were signing in using their FB ID to leave a comment here?

Of course, they must have found the article via Google, but that's not the only reason they were confused. And certainly FB have made one too many GUI changes lately, which really doesn't help matters. *sigh*

I think we all like Google, and I think we all like Facebook .. but we don't like both, together, all at the same time.

Cheers