ReadWriteWeb is a blog hosting articles about various internet products and trends, including social networking sites. On Wednesday they posted a short article about Facebook partnering with AOL.

Right now you're probably thinking the wank is something about the partnership. That wouldn't be nearly as funny as what actually ends up happening.

The first comment, while not wankish in itself, is a sign of things to come: "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..."

Soon the comments start flooding in from people thinking that they're on Facebook and demanding to be allowed to log in, many jumping straight to rage against this new "redesign" such as this woman: "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 ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????"

By page three people are wondering if the blog is being trolled, but one of the site maintainers has found the problem! Looking at their traffic stats, she's discovered that they're suddenly getting hits from a bunch of people searching Google for "facebook login". Yes, they're suddenly being flooded by people who don't know how to get to Facebook without searching Google for it. And the article was steadily creeping up the results list all day.

Around this time a big bold paragraph is added to the article informing people that the site is not Facebook, and providing anyone who needs them with links to get there and a suggestion to bookmark the real Facebook login page.

This doesn't help. And, though most people following the thread are amused by what's going on, at the same time the other side of the wank is forming; people who are getting increasing annoyed at the Facebook commenters for ignoring all the people telling them they're not at Facebook, for instance "Wow!

I mean just WOW!.... are people really this f**king stupid, and they rely so blindly on whatever the first link google throws up.

This is NOT facebook you clowns. How god damn retarded are you."

Three days, 27 pages later, and a smattering of news articles later and it's still going on, but at this point the people trying to get to Facebook have tapered off and it's just the people frothing at the mouth about them left.

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	amaresu 2010-02-14 01:44 am UTC (link)
	I've worked with people who did that. On attempting to explain to them the difference between the address bar and a search engine I was told that they get the same results so it didn't matter. ...it still pains me in my soul. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	ariadne484 2010-02-14 03:18 am UTC (link)
	applies soul balm (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	amaresu 2010-02-14 03:27 am UTC (link)
	Thank you. (Reply to this)(Parent)

iamnotyourmuse
2010-02-14 03:47 am UTC (link)

I got into a very frustrating conversation with a woman at work the other day. She'd typed in the name of my workplace to her browser's address bar and got something that was NOT our webpage and had another location listed but spelled wrong and the wrong phone number. She called us to complain and ask us to fix it. Except I couldn't figure out for the life of me WHAT she was looking at, and she couldn't understand that what she was looking at WASN'T our website just because it had come up first.

Maddening.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	mcity 2010-02-14 11:57 pm UTC (link)
	I read a letter from someone who said that their boss called them, and asked them to fix a typo on a webpage. Not the company's webpage, but simply one they linked to. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	agent_hyatt 2010-02-15 08:19 am UTC (link)
	Not a bad idea, but can we put the development of that kind of program behind the one that allows you to slap people through the Internet? The idiots needing a bitchslap tend to be a greater annoyance than rampant typos on webpages that you can't correct. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	America's executives: Our best and brightest minds in motion. issendai 2010-02-15 09:30 pm UTC (link)
	I used to get lists of site corrections that had been written up in meetings, passed to my boss, then passed on to me to fix. My boss routinely crossed out many of the suggestions because they weren't on our sites. They were were on sites we linked to. (Reply to this)(Parent)

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