Why does the "w" command not show other users as being logged in?

I just installed CrunchBang for a non-technical user, dollarBill.
It is lean and fast. It has been working out great.

So I used ssh to remotely login and update any packages.
At the command prompt, I typed "w" to make sure nobody else was logged.
It looked like I was the only one logged in.

But that is not the case because "top" and "htop" show that dollarBill is running chrome, viewnior, gnumeric, evince, ...

Why does the "w" command not show dollarBill as being logged in?
It works that way on the Ubuntu.