April 28 2008
TripIt Invites are Misleading
Recently I created an account on Tripit.com. I usually don’t do this, but I decided to invite a few friends through the interface they provide. Why not get our social network on, web 2.0 style, I thought.
I found out today that that invites sent out contain a link that automatically creates an account when it’s clicked. It’s not a horrible idea, if done properly. For starters, it should be clearly labeled in the email, as to what you’re about to do. The Tripit.com email decides to do the opposite & disguise it a bit by saying “View invitation from Bill Keller by following this link…”
TripIts wording is convoluted, they’re hiding what you’re really getting into.
Secondly, the page you end up on should be a confirmation screen that clearly states “You are about to create an account”. Instead, TripIt chose to use wording associated with their service (”Accept Connection Invite”), which keeps the level of confusion pretty damn high:
For some reason 37 Signals praise their current method, I think it’s pretty sketchy.
Anyone who inadvertently created an account because of me will now receive service related email. In this case, it’s spam, because you were tricked into signing up in the first place. My apologies. You can delete your TripIt account easily, like I did. Too bad there’s no “Recommend others delete their account as well” email I can send out.
2 Comments
cpawl // April 28 2008
I got your invite (didn’t except it yet) but I already had an account. Like all social web sites I am a member of, I create an account to check it out then realize I am not that social and in the end it is more work or simply pointless to me and my account remains dull and empty. Flickr, del.icio.us, Ma.gnolia, linkedin, basecamp, ta-da-list, don’t forget the milk, facebook, digg, newsvine, youtube, backpack, - man the list goes on and on of social sites I am a member of any use next to never. Twitter being the perfect example though… I have never seen such a pointless web trend. No offense but I could give two shits about little daily moments like, “Loving the sunshine. Thinking about blueberries.” ANYONE is having. If someone has something to say to me personally they can call, email, or IM me. If it is something worth hearing and it is that public I’ll let someone else hear it first and then tell me later. It’s like subscribing to spam IM from your “friends”. I plan to use it to write nothing more than my daily bowel movements, that is about all it is worth to me.
Hell I still never use RSS feeds. Sure I use a browser and email that can get them and have tried out plenty of feed readers but they still mean nothing to me as I ENJOY visiting sites to see what is new. I like having my bookmarks of sites I like and checking them out to see if people updated. That is half the fun of the internet. RSS reading is no fun… it is down right boring.
That brings me to another point… bookmarks. I have been adding things to del.icio.us for sometime now in hopes that one day I will care enough to use it. All the links I add there I also add locally. Since they are local, I use the local links when I need to refer to something. In this manner I have (this is the truth) never clicked on one of my links I added to any social bookmark site. I again see no point, I have them grouped in folders right in my browser and synced with my work machine. Why go to a site and try to figure out where the hell the link is I added when I have it right in front of me already. Especially on del.lcio.us were you can get lost in about 2 clicks.
Sharing… this web social crap is all about sharing that is why, right? Well thanks to everyone else wasting valuable time sharing I do not need to. If I read something, I don’t know, about CSS transparency all I need to do is google search it and BAM there is all the cool hip CSSsters with the links on their social sites to get me there. Because so many people are involved in sharing everything I don’t need to. Why share a link that 15,000 others are talking about too?
Anyway, rambling like always… yes the automatic invite by tripit is wrong. I agree.
Bill // April 28 2008
Thanks for sharing!
Yeah, we’re all down for creating accounts and checking out the sites, makes their sketchy moves even lamer, in my opinion.