As someone who has been interacting with computers since preschool (maybe even before then), it’s hard to remember that some people don’t know what a URL is or the difference between a browser and a search engine. We all have at least one friend or relative that can hardly operate a computer and always needs help doing some mundane process. It’s easy to write off these people, because surely they must be a miniscule percentage of internet users. But with the popularity of social networking sites like Facebook that connect people in a way we couldn’t have imagined ten years ago, more of these people are interacting with the world wide web.
On February 10th, ReadWriteWeb.com posted an article called “Facebook Wants to be Your One True Login”. The comments then began to fill up with confused and frustrated Facebook users wanting to know how to log in. This grew to about 300 comments. When I first read these comments, I couldn’t figure out what was going on. It soon became clear: many internet users use Google to “access” the internet. In this case, they were typing “Facebook login” into the search bar and clicking the first link. In this instance, Google’s new feed was at the top, and RWW article was the first result.
Comment #85 confirms this: “for those of you that want to get in face book now just go to Bing..put in face book and search (or it will pop up) hit on face book login and it takes you to your password page…i did it.… if this ever gets back to normal I will use the address bar from now on.….”
It also goes another level: Probably influenced by Facebook’s recent layout redesign, many, if not all, of these commenters couldn’t tell that they were on a blog article and not Facebook itself. They thought this was part of the redesign process.
No wonder phishing scams work out so well!
Is it really this hard to log on to Facebook? Google has become the gateway to the internet for people, and they likely don’t wander too far. While it’s good comedy, it’s an eye-opening look into how some people use the internet. Is it ironic that this happens just weeks after the iPad is announced and techies debate how it has no place in the market?
It’s hard to tell how many users utilize Google in this way, for some may have realized they were in the wrong place before attacking the comments box. Unfortunately, we can’t change how users behave, but maybe through incidents like this we can better understand how they interact with the web. So why doesn’t the actual Facebook login page come up when you type “Facebook login” into Google? Do users actually see a link or some design element or feature you implemented? How do you get them to do what you want? Are we making the internet too hard for people?
Good article, Kirsten. I’ve been following this story since you posted the link on your facebook profile… Have you seen the followup RWW story? They blame the incident on Google–faulty search algorithms, they say. There’s a rather interesting discussion in the comment thread.
Thanks for opening my eyes to a problem I didn’t even know existed!
What did you do with my Facebook login?
I like to train users to effectively bookmark sites they visit often in categorized folders. This limits mistakes like this.
In this particular instance, it’s not Google, RWW, or even the Internet’s fault that all of those people got upset at not being able to figure out how to login. The fact, plain and simple, is that some people are just completely oblivious and don’t pay attention to their surroundings. It’s no wonder they couldn’t figure out what was going on. If 300 people had the problem out of 400 million, that’s…0.000075% of Facebook users who probably have much bigger issues than simply not recognizing that RWW is, in fact, *not* Facebook. Yup…sounds about right…
The fact is, people aren’t reading anything anymore. They skip over things they don’t understand. They’ve learned to block out distracting elements: ads, widgets, links, ads, searchbars, etc and go for only what they recognize: in this case, the Facebook logo. Visual cues other than words. My husband and his brother constantly have to tell my mother-in-law to “read the screen,” because unless it leaps out at her and takes up the whole screen (over-simplified), she can’t find it.
Great article Kirsten. Really insightful. You’re right — we can criticize people till we’re blue in the face, but that doesn’t effect change. Thanks for the post!
How can we solve this problem entirely?