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February 5, 2007

Brilliant New Startup: Useless Account

Michael Arrington

54 comments »

The trick to any good humor or hoax site is an attention to detail and a seriousness about your work. Useless Account is the best recent example I’ve seen. It’s clear, for example, that more work has gone into this joke than many of the startups we see every day.

The site has a single function - to create a new account. “Open ID is a pipe dream” the site argues, which also has a fake quote from “TechLunch” that says “Slightly more useful than Twitter.” Once you’ve created your account, you can log in, and edit your account. That’s it. The reason this is really, really funny (for us) is because that’s what we do all day - create new account after new account at every new Internet startup that comes along. I am a seriously huge expert on account creation.

The best part of the site are the FAQs. Note the email for customer complaints and their plans to give away “free pro accounts.”

Useless Account was a fun diversion for a few minutes, and for that we are sharing it with our readers. It was created by Jim Whimpey and the Brisbane Creative team.

Other recent humor stories on TechCrunch:

Google TV - An Elaborate Hoax
Make Your Own iPhone (does not actually function)
Forget Second Life. Get a First Life.
Social Network Backlash
bullshitr

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Monday, February 5th, 2007 at 7:12 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

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Comments

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  1. Robert Dewey

    February 5th, 2007 at 7:16 pm

    Is that account “accounter” accurate? It’ll be interesting to see the number of people who actually do make an account :)

  2. Michael Arrington

    February 5th, 2007 at 7:17 pm

    I made one and it did not go up. I’ve been editing my account though. very nice.

  3. Josh

    February 5th, 2007 at 7:25 pm

    Let’s not forget First Life: http://www.techcrunch.com/2007.....irst-life/

  4. manfmnantucket

    February 5th, 2007 at 7:26 pm

    I’d love to see a TC post covering the various new services that require little or no account creation and which focus on removing ‘friction’.

    This has become one theme, it seems, among some of the new services covered - but it would be nice to see the no-account sites covered all in one place.

  5. steve

    February 5th, 2007 at 7:34 pm

    Glad to see companies from Brisbane, QLD getting ahead.

    Fantastic work !

  6. Robert Dewey

    February 5th, 2007 at 7:38 pm

    Yep - it’s accurate. It was at 5, now it’s up in the 20’s…

  7. TR

    February 5th, 2007 at 7:39 pm

    Another one you missed is http://www.vojosalsa.com

    VojoSalsa - the hottest web2.0 company around

  8. Robert Dewey

    February 5th, 2007 at 7:43 pm

    Any bets on how long it takes ‘em to get funded? I’m gonna say 2 weeks.

    Okay, maybe not… But I bet they’ll get a couple offers :)

  9. Michael Arrington

    February 5th, 2007 at 7:47 pm

    Josh - oh yeah. added it.

    It’s a not bad account creation tool. Really.

  10. Jim Whimpey

    February 5th, 2007 at 7:55 pm

    Thanks so much for profiling Useless Accont! I really hope it can handle the load…. Maybe if I got some funding? ;) 40 accounts and accounting!

  11. Patrick Havens

    February 5th, 2007 at 8:02 pm

    It is a good joke. heh.

  12. Robert Dewey

    February 5th, 2007 at 8:12 pm

    Uh-oh, the site appears to be losing/gaining consciousness… Looks like another example of Arrington trying to play God. I think you should disclose that next time.

    Anyway, I didn’t realize Jim was 19… It’s nice to see other techies in the same (general) age range. That’d work nicely as an entry-level computer science project.

  13. CVOS

    February 5th, 2007 at 8:13 pm

    Ironically, this site may be a fantastic lead generation tool, with a market segmentation of highly active, technology literate computer fanatics. They could have a good product marketing their contact database :)

  14. Andrew K.

    February 5th, 2007 at 8:37 pm

    Robert: Jim has moved the images to another server to lessen the load on Dreamhost. Unfortunately, their email servers have just gone down, so things are a bit shaky there at the moment.

  15. BillyWarhol

    February 5th, 2007 at 8:46 pm

    LOLLLLLLLL

    Hilarious!!************

    i agree completely with how LAME some of the startups are*

    SplashCast, Twango, Zooomr & a slew of others come to mind - too many to mention really!!

    ;))

    Good to see some Good Ol’ Fashioned Internet FUN happening back in the Web2.0 Sphere!!!

    Cheers!! Billy ;))

  16. Jeff

    February 5th, 2007 at 9:04 pm

    Hah, wonderful. Im a trekkie, pants from outer space.
    It is always nice to get a good laugh in. Thanks, UselessAccount.
    (My only complaint, the SignUp tab has a “1″ instead of a “!”. That could possibly be on purpose…)

  17. techBrunch

    February 5th, 2007 at 9:16 pm

    Don’t forget “Make Your Own iPhone (does not actually function)”, though you need a good color printer.

  18. Paul Montgomery

    February 5th, 2007 at 9:38 pm

    I’m user #127. I guess I’m not as 1337 as Arrington and the double-digit old skoolers.

  19. angus

    February 5th, 2007 at 10:29 pm

    My firefox is 100% when I’m creating account, seems the big font kill my Firefox

  20. Morgan

    February 5th, 2007 at 10:39 pm

    Hey Michael,

    Agree with manfmnantucket, you should put your expertise to work on a post about the least offensive signups you’ve seen. It might all seem obvious to you now, but I guarantee I routinely and unknowingly put steps in that are unnecessary and/or annoying to people. So it might help improve things that come out, and it would be helpful to a lot of us out here too lazy to do your research and learn for ourselves.

  21. pwb

    February 5th, 2007 at 10:55 pm

    Is there an API?

  22. RBA

    February 5th, 2007 at 10:58 pm

    To BillyWarhol (#15)… If you think that there’s more work put into the development of “Useless Account” than on Zooomr, you’ve got serious perception issues.

    Anyway Mike, as an expert on account creation you fail to tell us something: does “Useless Account” do a good job at that from a user’s perspective? In other words, would you say “yes, this is how the account creation process should be done”? :-)

  23. fishy

    February 6th, 2007 at 12:43 am

    “It’s clear, for example, that more work has gone into this joke than many of the startups we see every day.” - Mike are you serious…??? Think it takes 5 hours to get it online… I bet, including design, hosting whatever…

  24. RBA

    February 6th, 2007 at 2:18 am

    #23 - I think the keyword here is “startup”. Many of those “startups” that Mike & co. see evry day aren’t really startup companies, but a quick weekend project (or a 1-2 weeks project) carried out by one or two folks, which is what probably Useless Account is.

    Are these weekend projects a startup? Well, they might be a “start” and they happens to be “up” but that hardly compares to other startups that have received >$2M in funding for example.

    So what Mike probably meant is that “a joke project” like this one has got more work into it than some “serious projects” presented to him. Can you argue that?

  25. bernard

    February 6th, 2007 at 2:27 am

    Nah,

    This isn’t a real start-up!

    There was no A-list blooger with sooper-sekret beta accounts. With the incessant “wow this is going to be big” chatter.

    And then, the release on the world!

    I am a little skeptical….

    b :P

  26. l

    February 6th, 2007 at 3:54 am

    Please? where is TC’s quality?

    The word “Brilliant Startup” took me to the site and create an account. But it is just a stupid place. Waste of my time. I am sure there will be tons of folks go there and create accounts. And after couple of days, the site will get zero traffic.

    Brilliant Startup, come on? Why mislead folks?

    TC has become sort of monopoly.We need some competition for TC so that quality wont degrade.

  27. Adrian Keys

    February 6th, 2007 at 5:49 am

    “TC has become sort of monopoly.We need some competition for TC so that quality wont degrade. ”

    Hey, I am sure this was just an injection of humor.

  28. Mary

    February 6th, 2007 at 6:21 am

    hehehe funny joke :-)

  29. Robert Dewey

    February 6th, 2007 at 7:06 am

    Wow, the number of users that are registering is insane… I’m seeing ~15 users per minute.

  30. Jason G

    February 6th, 2007 at 7:12 am

    Seems like a brilliant way to harvest email addresses to me.

  31. Anonymous

    February 6th, 2007 at 7:19 am

    you wrote “It’s clear, for example, that more work has gone into this joke than many of the startups we see every day.”

    and yet on the front page of the site, the very 1st navigation menu item reads “Sign Up Now!!1″ …the “1″ looks more like a typo than having a purpose. It doesn’t strike me as having “more work done”.

    Otherwise, it is a funny little site. Thanks for sharing it with us :)

  32. Seth

    February 6th, 2007 at 7:38 am

    Anonymous: Umm, no. That’s a common joke to show overly-exaggerated enthusiasm and is highly intentional.

  33. Tim

    February 6th, 2007 at 7:51 am

    Are there any Pro Accounts for Accounting Experts?

  34. television united

    February 6th, 2007 at 8:20 am

    great hoax, much like those cats in a bottle one.

  35. Michael Kimsal

    February 6th, 2007 at 8:46 am

    They need to put in some sort of random image or captcha sort of thing. As it stands now just *anyone* can register an account - even robots and hired overseas labor! I’m not sure I trust a useless account system that doesn’t even have a captcha system. How can I be sure they won’t spam me?

  36. Shine

    February 6th, 2007 at 9:13 am

    see this… it’s really amazing…… http://enginepuller.com/

  37. Avinio

    February 6th, 2007 at 9:17 am

    mmmm between us? i didn’t get the point :)

  38. mathew

    February 6th, 2007 at 9:21 am

    I use OpenID almost every day, FYI…

  39. John

    February 6th, 2007 at 9:32 am

    You’ll love LoginLogin.com…debuting March 1st. It’ll make it easier to access all the accounts you have created.

  40. Bob

    February 6th, 2007 at 9:52 am

    They need to seriously change their color scheme. The light font color on light blue background makes it almost impossible to read.

  41. Christian

    February 6th, 2007 at 10:15 am

    Anyone want to buy my StupiR.com domian? I can’t think of a spoof site for it.

  42. fucter

    February 6th, 2007 at 10:29 am

    so this is a joke?

  43. Anne

    February 6th, 2007 at 10:44 am

    Nice one, thank you. Particularly considering it’s been far too long since we got Nada (http://www.bernardbelanger.com/computing/NaDa/).

  44. Bob Kabob

    February 6th, 2007 at 11:45 am

    Come on… this is as old as…. well… let’s see… http://www.registerforfree.net has an entry in archive.org back in 9/2003.

    Get with it Arrington, you’re losing your edge!

    http://www.registerforfree.net
    http://web.archive.org/web/200.....rfree.net/

  45. Shine

    February 6th, 2007 at 11:53 am

    see this ….. looks awasom http://enginepuller.com/engine.....Shine.aspx

  46. Strawberry

    February 6th, 2007 at 1:41 pm

    Please get rid of the Snapz…

  47. JodieM

    February 6th, 2007 at 2:11 pm

    This is really a interesting experiment, it just goes to show you how much we really need Federated Identity Managment. Now the start up that can do that and get it used by lots of other internet sites is the one that I will be interested in following. I’ve already signed up to loginlogin.com to see what that does. I will happily sign up anywhere that will lessen my signupitis.

  48. SaintAndre

    February 6th, 2007 at 4:12 pm

    What exactly would you need to have in order to create a website that will register you automatically with a new website?

    1. A program that could recognize what text-fields are related to what questions.

    2. A program that interprets questions and enters answers from a pre-filled questionaire.

    3. A program that navigates a registration website, allowing the other two programs to function.

    Are we really that far from those three goals? Travelocity sign-up isn’t exactly the Turing Test.

  49. Brian Baligad

    February 6th, 2007 at 5:11 pm

    Since they mention it, the domain would make a pretty funny OpenID provider name.

  50. Dallas Freeman

    February 8th, 2007 at 2:24 pm

    Account creation should be simple, one annoying thing I have is email verification - especially from sites that ask “Verify Email Address.” Your bound to get it right if you had to type it twice.

    I’m thrown off from creating accounts, if I really like a site, then I will - otherwise I’m gone.

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