The web has evolved but we still see sites pulling the same obnoxious stunts that annoyed us in 1994. Here are out 8 biggest annoyances about the net.
5. Suggested friends/Twitter accounts to follow
I get it - Facebook is a social experience, and if you're just signing up for a new account, it can be a pain to populate your Friends list. That's why you can just add a few friends and let Facebook recommend friends who share some of your contacts. The same goes for Twitter, and undoubtedly several other social networking sites. Convenient, right?
Sure it is, except that for anyone who has been on Facebook for a while, the list of suggested friends reads less like a helpful collection of long-lost pals and more like a rogues' gallery of exes, frenemies, and other people you'd rather not keep in touch with. That is to say, if you and someone else have 100 mutual friends and neither of you has reached out to the other on Facebook, there's probably a good reason for it.
6. Poorly targeted advertisements
Note to website operators: You need to show ads to pay for your site and make money? Fine with me. But if you're going to stick me with tracking cookies to figure out what I'm interested in or use my Facebook profile information to sell me stuff, you could at least make the ad targeting more effective (or, ideally, get better advertisers).
Instead, I'm seeing rows and rows of ads that range from boring ('Violent RPG Game') to downright bizarre (Jamie Lee Curtis has a line of children's books?). Furthermore, since I know these ads display according to the information in my Facebook profile, it's almost kind of insulting - and I'm not getting barraged by ads for birth control, baby-photo contests, and weight-loss products, like most of the women I know on Facebook.
What's more, apparently you site operators expect me to do your job for you and tell you which ads I don't like. That's just...lazy.
7. Asking to publish on Facebook everything one buys, eats or comments about
Sharing drives the new web - but that doesn't mean I want to dump everything I type somewhere on the web into my Facebook feed for all my friends to see.
After all, if I wanted my friends to know what I thought of the Mexican restaurant on the corner of my road, I'd share on Facebook the Yelp review I wrote - and if I wanted them to know my opinion of every single business establishment I have ever visited, I'd add them as a friend on Yelp. If I wanted them to know I was buying an HDTV, instant curry and a beer for my Saturday night in, I'd mention it in a Facebook status update. But never in a million years would I want to automatically share all of that with my hundreds of Facebook friends. So quit asking.
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- Archaic and annoying
- Third-party cookies
- Suggested friends/Twitter accounts to follow
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Comments
datasman said: Im happy to tolerate advertising on a site if the content is good and the content on this site is excellentYou get nothing for nothing as the old saying goes
Ripper Van Winkle said: Youre lucky to get a link on Megaupload these daysall I get is some message telling me theres been excess requests from my ISP address and I have to wait 30minsI wait 30mins go to download and get the same message
Matt Egan - Editor said: This comment comes to you courtesy of our sponsors Just kidding The ad-supported free vs pay-for web content debate is not a new one Im well aware of how annoying some adverts can be just as I recognise that some are informative and all help to keep PCAdvisorcouk free to all users Put bluntly wed love to run an ad-free site but we simply cannot afford to And trust me you should see the ads we refuse to run That said I take all these comments on board and well endeavour to make the site a little cleaner As to hypocrisy - this is an opinion piece and a very good one at that But it doesnt follow that everyone who works at PCAdvisorcouk holds exactly the same views Were a broad churchMatt
Dick Khightly said: Your site is one of the worse offenders advert hovers all over the placehypocrits
Spikepix said: Install AdThwart I cant see any Ads
Brendan said: hey jonnyrock how about you pay to read pc adviser and then there would be no adverts its free man
JonnyRock said: Its all well and good carping about annoying adverts on web pages but of late this very site is so festooned with advertisements it slows my browser down and I cant concentrate on the articles properly for all the promotions cluttering up the page Practice what you preach PC Adviser and get rid of some of these advertisements theyre a real pain
jonathan said: rofl and while reading this artical i had an ad scroll across my screen and pop up in the center