This week thousands of visitors arrived at ReadWriteWeb thinking we were the new Facebook and asking us how to login. The phenomenon came about as mainstream audiences were directed to our story via Google search for “Facebook login”. While RWW’s regular tech readers found the mistake amusing, it perhaps speaks to the fact that there are huge variables in user interaction.
A few months ago Betaworks’ Andrew Weissman wrote an article entitled, Don’t Get High On Your Own Supply where he tells entrepreneurs to step outside of their insular worlds. He writes, “[It] can mean not believing what other people say or write about your service – good or bad – it is the use case that matters, not the chatter.”
In our world of tech media, it’s easy to forget that there is a large group of users who type terms like “Facebook login” into Google search. Could you imagine if we’d written an article entitled, “Bank of America Wants to Be Your One True Password”? We might all be sipping margaritas in the Grand Cayman right now.
If a huge audience can’t understand the difference between a blog and a social networking site, how are we supposed to explain the concepts of OAuth and OpenID? If you’re a startup entrepreneur, step outside of your own world of early adopters and look at your product through the eyes of a n00b. While we didn’t mean to confuse Facebook users, the traffic on this week’s login post is proof that the late adoption audience is a valuable group to consider.
Photo Credit: Dave Olson
