ReadWriteWeb proves the Internet is a tricky place

Earlier today, I wrote an article on MobileCrunch that resulted in a comment which left me scratching my head. It was clear to me that the commenter didn’t read my post or headline and skipped straight to the comments and attacked me for being misinformed. I told my editor, Greg, to check my info and he sent me a link to ReadWriteWeb; more specifically, a post entitled The Internet Is Hard.

It’s an article written in response to another ReadWriteWeb post regarding Facebook login. Thanks to some clever SEO, or search engine optimization (and a reason some web nerds loathe SEO), Google searching “Facebook login” landed that post at the top of the list of results. Hundreds of users were thoroughly confused when they clicked on the link, expecting to be taken to Facebook, and left comments saying they loathe the new redesign and the red color everywhere.

Oh my.

It made me laugh, but when I finished reading it, I was quickly reminded of what I’m doing on the Internet and the people with whom I interact. The post was very well-written and it touched on some points that nerds/geeks/media people easily forget. Here are a few of my favorites:

• Building for geeks makes for great customer immersion if you’re building something like (the wonderfully useful) GitHub, but that same process doesn’t work so hot if you’re building a site for middle-aged moms.
• For example, none of the 200 or so confused Facebook users who commented on our earlier post read the post itself, the huge logo at the top of the page, the many links to non-Facebook-related content or the huge, all-bold paragraph about how ReadWriteWeb is not, in fact, some ill-conceived redesign of Facebook. They simply searched for “Facebook login” and, upon navigating to our site, scrolled until they found the one button they wanted to click.
• As a tech geek of the 12-hours-a-day-online variety, I appreciate innovative and intuitive web interfaces. But a lot of users don’t. Even if it’s simple, it needs to be familiar.
• 400 million people now use Facebook, and they don’t all have CS Master’s degrees from Stanford. But if you work in the IT/tech/Internet/online media industries, they do manage to pay your bills. They’re the ones who open emails, click ads, make purchases, sign up for subscriptions and generally take the majority of actions that make our whole ecosystem work.

I think the same advice can be applied to anyone within a certain field. The elitism that runs rampant on the Internet can get a little ridiculous. Even I’m guilty of this when I groan at a friend who can’t find a cached page on Google, or they have trouble accessing e-mail privacy settings. ReadWriteWeb’s post is a great reminder that we’re not all pros at everything, and I’m glad they refrained from openly insulting all the users who were leaving confused and snarling comments.

No one likes to be barked at by an IT guy because he or she doesn’t know how to set e-mail retrieval intervals. No one likes being shamed by a mechanic when a car owner doesn’t know that you’re supposed to check your tire pressure every month.

The point that ReadWriteWeb made is that everyone is good at something, and we shouldn’t bemoan them for being incompetent at what we do. After all, these non-web-savvy people could be the ones fixing our cars, flying our planes or even protecting our country. It would benefit us all to point each other in the right direction instead of snarling at ignorance. And, after all, it never hurts to help.