URL? What's an URL?
Mark Bernstein writes about something I noticed yesterday, but was too tired (more driveway clearance) to comment on: the way an awful lot of people use the web:
The comments of this page are now filled with users who, one after the other, googled “facebook login” in order to log into Facebook. That’s how they use the Web; the Google and assume that the first listing is what they want. When they see this article, they don’t say,
Oops! This is an article about logging into Facebook! I’m in the wrong place!No indeed. They assume that this is some strange new Facebook design, and they don't like it one bit.
It's easy to sit back, as someone who knows his way around the net (and pretty much only associates with other people of similar knowledge bases) and think "everyone knows what an url is". Then you run into something like what Mark commented on, and you really have to sit back and consider things. When I first ran through the comments, I was sure that the "where's my login" thing was a few people having fun. But then the comments kept going, and going... until it became clear that no, for a lot of people, Google is the net. Things haven't progressed as far past the old days of the AOL walled garden as I might of thought - for a lot of people, the net consists only of what Google turns up in the first page, or even just the first few results. The rest of it may as well not exist.
Comments
Re: URL? What's an URL?
[anonymous] February 13, 2010 0:40:50.522
Have you seen the street interviews with people asking what is the web & Google?
see [link 1]
It would seem to be widespread, but of course video can be edited to only show the answers you want.
[1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ]
Oops
[anonymous] February 13, 2010 0:43:44.652
Sorry that was meant to say what is a browser & Google, not web & Google.