35 ms·

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

by autarch 17y ago

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.

natep 17y ago
It certainly isn't _most_ users, but there are enough people that do this to register on Google Trends: http://www.google.com/trends?q=facebook%2C+facebook+login http://www.google.com/trends?q=facebook%2C+facebook+login
ubernostrum 17y ago
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-google.html http://www.dailydomainer.com/200742-yahoo-top-search-term-on... Here's Jeremy Zawodny in 2008 musing on the fact that people neither know about nor understand the address bar: http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/010453.html http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/010453.html I could go on like this for a while, but the takeaway is that if you know what your browser's address bar is for and actually type URLs into it, then you're probably in a small minority of web users.
- cgranade 17y ago
  Maybe users that type in actual addresses are in the minority, but then I consider this to be a basic literacy issue, just as I consider it a failure of basic science literacy when people say that lasers work by focusing sound waves (http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2010/01/public_knowledge_of_science_th.php http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2010/01/public_knowledge_...). The Internet has had a transformative effect on society, and to not even know the first thing about it represents a failure of the educational system to prepare people to participate in what is now a very connected world.
  - awkward 17y ago
    It's not a failure of literacy, it's a failure of URLs as a system. Which company has which URL is determined by a long set of events having to do with competing businesses, events and plain luck that even people here wouldn't care to unravel for most of the sites they visit. The best example I can think of now is when pitchfork (the music review site) was at pitchforkmedia.com, and pitchfork.com was owned by a company that sold hay. Search, on the other hand, has failures, but those failures are rapidly fixed.
- pyre 17y ago
  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.
  - ubernostrum 17y ago
    Charles Miller today commented on this: http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2010/02/12/two_steps_forward_two_steps_ba/ http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2010/02/12/two_steps_forward_tw... And mentioned his own anecdote: http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2003/10/09/the_internet_and_understanding_users/ http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2003/10/09/the_internet_and_und... Choice quote: URLs. Bookmarks. Changing your homepage. All of these things were voodoo. As he points out, claims that people are more "savvy" today than they were then probably don't hold up; if anything, users back then probably were more knowledgeable on average, simply by virtue of even having Internet access.
    - pyre 17y ago
      My comment wasn't the people should know about the bookmarking system, just that the concept of the bookmarking system is less complex to people than the concept of URLs and the location/address bar.
      - whatusername 17y ago
        Isn't that something Chrome / Safari / Opera are doing well now? Top Sites is going to show facebook as the first link - in a big box called facebook, as soon as they open their browser..

by autarch 17y ago

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.

natep 17y ago

It certainly isn't _most_ users, but there are enough people that do this to register on Google Trends: http://www.google.com/trends?q=facebook%2C+facebook+login http://www.google.com/trends?q=facebook%2C+facebook+login

ubernostrum 17y ago

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-google.html http://www.dailydomainer.com/200742-yahoo-top-search-term-on... Here's Jeremy Zawodny in 2008 musing on the fact that people neither know about nor understand the address bar: http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/010453.html http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/010453.html I could go on like this for a while, but the takeaway is that if you know what your browser's address bar is for and actually type URLs into it, then you're probably in a small minority of web users.

cgranade 17y ago
Maybe users that type in actual addresses are in the minority, but then I consider this to be a basic literacy issue, just as I consider it a failure of basic science literacy when people say that lasers work by focusing sound waves (http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2010/01/public_knowledge_of_science_th.php http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2010/01/public_knowledge_...). The Internet has had a transformative effect on society, and to not even know the first thing about it represents a failure of the educational system to prepare people to participate in what is now a very connected world.
- awkward 17y ago
  It's not a failure of literacy, it's a failure of URLs as a system. Which company has which URL is determined by a long set of events having to do with competing businesses, events and plain luck that even people here wouldn't care to unravel for most of the sites they visit. The best example I can think of now is when pitchfork (the music review site) was at pitchforkmedia.com, and pitchfork.com was owned by a company that sold hay. Search, on the other hand, has failures, but those failures are rapidly fixed.
pyre 17y ago
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.
- ubernostrum 17y ago
  Charles Miller today commented on this: http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2010/02/12/two_steps_forward_two_steps_ba/ http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2010/02/12/two_steps_forward_tw... And mentioned his own anecdote: http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2003/10/09/the_internet_and_understanding_users/ http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2003/10/09/the_internet_and_und... Choice quote: URLs. Bookmarks. Changing your homepage. All of these things were voodoo. As he points out, claims that people are more "savvy" today than they were then probably don't hold up; if anything, users back then probably were more knowledgeable on average, simply by virtue of even having Internet access.
  - pyre 17y ago
    My comment wasn't the people should know about the bookmarking system, just that the concept of the bookmarking system is less complex to people than the concept of URLs and the location/address bar.
    - whatusername 17y ago
      Isn't that something Chrome / Safari / Opera are doing well now? Top Sites is going to show facebook as the first link - in a big box called facebook, as soon as they open their browser..