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
Is that account “accounter” accurate? It’ll be interesting to see the number of people who actually do make an account
I made one and it did not go up. I’ve been editing my account though. very nice.
Let’s not forget First Life: http://www.tech...t-a-first-life/
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.
Glad to see companies from Brisbane, QLD getting ahead.
Fantastic work !
Yep – it’s accurate. It was at 5, now it’s up in the 20’s…
Another one you missed is http://www.vojosalsa.com
VojoSalsa – the hottest web2.0 company around
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
Josh – oh yeah. added it.
It’s a not bad account creation tool. Really.
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!
It is a good joke. heh.
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.
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
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.
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
)
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…)
Don’t forget “Make Your Own iPhone (does not actually function)”, though you need a good color printer.
I’m user #127. I guess I’m not as 1337 as Arrington and the double-digit old skoolers.
My firefox is 100% when I’m creating account, seems the big font kill my Firefox
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.
Is there an API?
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”?
“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…
#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?
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
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.
“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.
hehehe funny joke
Wow, the number of users that are registering is insane… I’m seeing ~15 users per minute.
Seems like a brilliant way to harvest email addresses to me.
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
Anonymous: Umm, no. That’s a common joke to show overly-exaggerated enthusiasm and is highly intentional.
Are there any Pro Accounts for Accounting Experts?
great hoax, much like those cats in a bottle one.
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?
see this… it’s really amazing…… http://enginepuller.com/
mmmm between us? i didn’t get the point
I use OpenID almost every day, FYI…
You’ll love LoginLogin.com…debuting March 1st. It’ll make it easier to access all the accounts you have created.
They need to seriously change their color scheme. The light font color on light blue background makes it almost impossible to read.
Anyone want to buy my StupiR.com domian? I can’t think of a spoof site for it.
so this is a joke?
Nice one, thank you. Particularly considering it’s been far too long since we got Nada (http://www.bern...computing/NaDa/).
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.arch...terforfree.net/
see this ….. looks awasom http://enginepu...as%20Shine.aspx
Please get rid of the Snapz…
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.
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.
Since they mention it, the domain would make a pretty funny OpenID provider name.
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.