Funny thing happened on the way to the Facebook log-in page. Earlier this
month, hundreds of users wanting to log into Facebook got lost” and stumbled into a technology blog instead that had just written I about the social networking site. And they couldn’t tell the difference.
I’ve always felt it imprudent to post personal information on the Internet, including photographs, for the whole world to see. At the same time, I found the “games” that Facebook uses to lure people in an insipid waste of time.
But the recent events at the technology blog ReadWriteWeb (www.readwritteweb.com) confirmed, albeit accidentally, my notion of the type of people Facebook attracts. I’m afraid the picture is not too flattering.
It began with Mike Melanson post entitled “Facebook Wants to Be Your One True Login,” which warned about the impact of Facebook recent alliance with AOL.
The partnership will enable AOLS 17 million users to import their Facebook friends as instant messaging contacts and allow chat directly between the two services.
“The partnership reinforces the idea that our Facebook profile is at the center of our online existence,” Melanson wrote. “Whether or not someone is signed into AOL is no longer what’s at stake here, its whether or not the user is logged into Facebook,”
The point was valid, but neither Melanson nor ReadWriteWeb were ready for what happened next.
“Within a half an hour of posting, the number of visitors had skyrocketed, Melanson writes in a subsequent post. “It looked like a real winner. An hour later, it had reached the number of visitors an average post might see in an entire day.I figured I’d hit a home run.