The Popularity of Facebook

Yesterday this article by the blog Read Write Web was inundated with confusing and poorly-written comments by many people attempting to log in to their Facebook page. After the site's administrator looked into it, it seems that many people just type "Facebook login" into Google, and click on the first link that is returned. After reading through several hundred comments. Some thoughts:

First and most obviously there is the hilarity of the thought that a person has so little computer literacy that the only way they can find Facebook is by doing a Google search, find RWW's post, fail to read it, manage to scroll all the way to the bottom, find the Facebook Connect login, and post a comment riddled with spelling and grammatical errors. How, in this entire process, they could not understand how RWW's site was not Facebook is beyond me.

Reading the genuine comments, it's saddening to consider the poor spelling and grammar of many of these  people:

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 ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

I truly love Faceback.I am able to talk to more then one person.


hello i want in now whats goin on,jus wen i wasstartin 2 ike it*

Are these people truly this stupid or are they just ignorant of how foolish they appear when they type like this? I would hope for the later, but am thinking the former.

*It should be no surprise that this person is a member of six fan pages, all of them relating to Farmville.

This situation is an example of how far the digital divide has split the haves and have-nots, with a service becoming so ubiquitous that even those that don't know how to operate a computer wanting to use the service, even if they can only get there using a very specific route. I wonder how these people fare in their occupations, especially with computers.

Sadly, these people are also part of the reason why I'm attempting to wean myself away from Facebook altogether - there's only so many application requests and stupid fan pages I'm willing to take. The Facebook of today is a far cry from the one I joined in 2004, and while it may be better for the bottom line, it's not really as fun having to wonder each time I post new content if what I'm saying might be something I don't want my parents or employers to know about.

I'm also intrigued at how much search traffic Google must get from these ill-informed individuals. Indeed "Google" is even a verb at this point (would it be a lower case "g" in this context?), synonymous with an internet search, and this can only help them remain on top with regards to their top money-making service.