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May 12

CyberNotes: 5 Worst Websites to Avoid

Posted in: CyberNotes, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on January 19, 2008 by CyberNet.

Weekend Website

Usually our Weekend Website article features a site that’s worth checking out whether it be an awesome online service or just a site that offers something useful. To change things up, we thought today we’d “feature” five different web sites that you should avoid! Now, we didn’t come up with this list ourselves — Time Magazine actually came up with this list and published it as their list of the five worst web sites. Any guesses as to which ones made the list?

eHarmony.com
About eHarmony: If you haven’t heard of eHarmony before, I don’t know where you’ve been living! They have commercials on TV all the time where they show all of the happy couples that have found true love. In a nutshell, they’re an online dating service. While they may have a handful of success stories under their belt, and they claim 90 eHarmony members get married every single day, there’s got to be something about them that would land them on Time magazines list, right?
According to Time, their main issue with eHarmony is their “power to cause utter despair.” They talk about the fact that every member of eHarmony ends up answering 436 compatibility survey questions which means people tend to have more “invested” into the site than other dating sites out there. Combine that with the fact that users pay anywhere from $21-$60 a month to be a member, and they’ll feel like they lost out on quite a bit (money and time) if they don’t find a match.
Evite.com
About Evite: Evite considers themselves to be “the top online destination for invitations.” They offer a lot of great planning tools like checklists for every event, a budget estimator that will help you calculate how much the event will cost, and more. Additionally, they offer themed planning pages and even have recipes that you can sift through. They offer so much, so what’s the issue?
Time says that their problem is that it’s in need of an overhaul! It’s such a useful site but they’ve apparently put more focus into all of the features that they can offer instead of concentrating how they can present those features in an “easy-on-they-eyes” type of way. They also say that it would be nice if you could upload photos before the party (instead of just after) and the option to include music and video would be nice as well.
Meez.com
About Meez: Meez, as the name suggests, is about expressing yourself online and creating an avatar. Having an avatar to represent yourself on the Internet has become a fad over the last few years. Meez helps you create the perfect avatar and you can do all of the typical avatar creating things like add a skin tone and body type, add a hairstyle, put on different outfits and add accessories. It’s simple, and Meez helps you get the job done. So what’s the problem?

According to Time, it’s not so much just Meez that is bad, it’s the “digital doodads created with the help of Meez and other sites” like it that are annoying to them.
MySpace.com
About MySpace: Do I really need to tell you about MySpace? I think not. We all know that it’s one of the most, if not the most popular social network.
Time’s issue with the site is that not only do most of the pages have terrible design, it’s also become invested with spammers and marketers who try to make friends with you. They say that “Of course, there have always been loads of MySpace profiles of fictional characters, created to help market a movie or promote some other brand. But it’s the bait-and-switch tactics from these leeches that have taken things to a whole new- and sad- level.”
SecondLife.com
About SecondLife: SecondLife is an Internet-based virtual world that launched back in 2003. It’s become a rather popular place for people to go on the Internet, and more than 20 million accounts have been registered.

Time Magazine actually has several issues with the site which include:
– It’s notoriously slow to load
– It’s difficult to navigate
– Creating and personalizing the must-have avatar for the game is tedious
– Movements feel clunky and there can be a terrible lag
– The learning curve is simply too high