I have always questioned the validity of usability mostly because I have based my opinions of usability on what other people have said are usability flaws. I should start by saying that I know there are certain things that are know facts, but there are some that I question and I'll give an example. I was listening to a Podcast today that was talking about usability and how facebook was ruining itself...blah, blah, blah, but the one thing that stood out to me was when someone on the panel said he signed up for myspace but it was so unusable and cluttered that he couldn't understand it and had to leave and that facebook was easier to use. My issue with this is that Myspace has hundreds of millions of users most of whom are not usability experts. In fact they are just the opposite. So why is it that a usability expert can't figure the site out, but someone with no expectations can use it and use it so easily that they convince over a hundred million people to use it as well? I think this is what bothers me. Have we as "usability experts" talked up what usability is and why it is so important that we have almost crippled ourselves to actually enjoying the internet?