12 September 2008

Cheap gay Facebook

I joined a group on Facebook a while ago, set up by some company that was setting up a new social networking site for gay men and was looking for site testers. So I thought OK, that might be interesting, and I put my name down.

It took a while for them to reach the stage where they were ready to start letting people join and test the site, but eventually on Monday they sent a message out saying everyone should now sign up and start letting them know what they think.

Oh. My. God. It was SO rubbish! For a start, it was called Cockbook. That's just crass, predictable, and I'm sure that lots of people might not want to have loads of cockbook.com URLs appearing in their internet history at work.

So, name: crap.

Then there was the 'Create your profile' bit. They'd basically just taken all of the fields you fill in on Gaydar and used those, right down to the type of guy you are (twink, bear, etc.), the type of guy you like, and even the 'Rather not say' option for any of the more delicate questions like manhood size. Oh yes, and the form didn't work particularly well either.

Content: crap.

And then there was the design... How can I describe it? Oh yes: imagine Facebook. Now imagine if you asked a retarded eight year old to draw a picture of Facebook using blue crayons. That's what it looked like. It was almost exactly the same as Facebook (old Facebook anyway, the new design was probably a bit hard for the retarded eight year old to render with crayons), right down to the shade of blue used, the bar at the top, and the Account and Privacy links down at the bottom. I'll be surprised if they don't get sued for infringement of copyright!

Design: crap. Possibly the worst design I've ever seen on a 'professionally made' website.

Oo oo, and I almost forgot the best bit. To start with your account is 'Not verified'. When you click on why, it says that in order to stop people using profile photos that aren't actually of themselves (sadly this does happen on Gaydar, when people are too ugly to use their own pictures) they have set up a system of checking. In order to get your account 'verified', they want you to write on a piece of paper a FIFTEEN CHARACTER random verification code they give you, hold it up, photograph yourself holding it and looking like a complete knobhead for going to all this trouble, and then email it to them. Only then will they believe you actually are the person in the photo. What a completely ridiculous thing to expect people to do! That was the last straw for me.

Usability: crap.

So I clicked off of it, went back on Facebook, and left a scathing message on the group wall about how pathetic the site is.

And now they've deleted my message, because clearly when they asked for feedback they only wanted people to say nice things! Losers...
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