The role of anti-marketing design

by on March 4, 2006

At the Northern Voice conference I met Markus Frind, founder of Plentyoffish.com. He’s Google’s #1 Adsense user in Canada. His site is pulling in more than $10,000 per day from Google, he told me, and has millions of passionate users. Tens of millions of page views EVERY DAY. Whew!

What’s the secret to his success? Ugly design. I call it “anti-marketing design.”

Huh?

He says that sites that have ugly designs are well known to pull more revenue, be more sticky, build better brands, and generally be more fun to participate in, than sites with beautiful designs.

Ahh, yet another example of anti-marketing marketing.

He joins a good list. Google. Is it pretty? No. Craig’s List? Pretty? No. MySpace? Pretty? No.

He says he designed his site to be easy to use, fast to load, and uncluttered, but he didn’t pick pretty colors or fonts. He did, however, spend a lot of time learning how search engines indexed their contents.

Why does anti-marketing design work? Well, for one, big companies will never do a site that doesn’t look pretty. Why? Cause of the prevailing belief that great brands need to be beautiful. Look at what corporate branding experts study. Apple. Target. BMW. Everything those guys do is beautiful. Aesthetic. Crafted by committees of ad marketing department experts.

But, go deeper: we’re sick of committee-driven marketing. We don’t believe it. If we ever did. We’ve built a bulls**t filter that filters out well-designed things in a commercial context. We trust things more when they look like they were done for the love of it rather than the sheer commercial value of it. That’s why my Channel 9 videos work. What kind of company committee could come up with something like that? Let some goofy guy with a goofy laugh go around with a cheap camcorder, no lights, no makeup, no editing and record conversations? Fire the guy who came up with that! :-) Look at Plentyoffish again. It was designed and coded by one guy: Markus. Seriously. One guy did that and is making all that cash. No committees. No experts. Just a guy who wanted to learn to program and did.

Oh, and I love that he picked .NET to code his site. It’s all running in .NET 2.0 and you should hear the praises he has for .NET. I wish I could film him and put him on Channel 9. It’d end all the talk that Windows isn’t scalable, isn’t secure, and can’t keep up a highly trafficed site.

But, back to the anti-marketing design. I think I accidentally fell into this as well. My design is ugly. Anti-marketing. Why? Because I wanted to make it fast. I didn’t choose a pretty font because doing so would have added a little bit of weight to my CSS file. Does this matter? I think it does. I read a LOT of blogs on my cell phone and mine loads WAY faster than many blogs out there.

It’s amazing how few corporate types get that the quality and engineering thought behind your HTML matters more than whether your site is pretty or not.

Maybe MySpace is kicking blogging’s behind because most blogs are simply too pretty!

By the way, his anti-marketing message continues right to his about page.

If it’s ugly is authentic. Not corporate. It is good. No?

  • Yup,

    exactly...

    simple and uncluttered. fast loading.
    keeping it simple.

    part of why i like your blog scoble...

    links and the content, nothing else.

    black and white.

    exactly why i think people switched from Yahoo to google.

    un-cluttered, short url, and it's fast.
  • mabisa
    Certainly, craigslist and Google manage to be incredibly functional despite (because of?) their fugliness. However, MySpace pages are rarely "fast to load...[or] uncluttered," and don't really deserve to to be equated with sites that value simplicity such as the others you mention. (MySpace pages...*shudder*!)
  • Robert, I think you're making a great leap with this post. I bet he has the traffic not because the site is "un-designed" but because he's studied SEO and it's a "free" "dating" site. As far as fast loading sites, one can make a lovely looking site and still make it a fast load. Google "is" designed, it just uses the "keep it simple stupid" approach.
  • It's not my leap to make. It was his words that keyed me into this trend. He says he's studied how various designs work and the uglier he made his site, the better the traffic went and, more importantly, the better his advertising did.

    Other people I know have found exactly the same thing.

    Even me. I have Microsoft's ugliest weblog.
  • I went to that site and immediately the first thing that I thought was that it lacked credibility. The anti-marketing design approach works for well-established players who get good word-of-mouth recognition. People use Google, Craigslist, etc., because someone else has told them to do so. They've found out through the media or a friend or however that that's the route to go. If you're trying to introduce yourself to the web, a slick design is the best way to do it. Look at all these Web 2.0 companies out there. I'd be willing to bet $100 that Newsvine got more people to subscribe to their email list with that beautiful signup page than another company that just has an input field and some text that says "We'll email you when we get our act together and finall release our product." We shouldn't be quick to confuse simplicity and bad design.
  • Tetra
    This is the site you're hyping? Its hideous. Its slow. It uses .NET? It looks like it barely out of 1996, nevermind 2006.

    I'm floored that this pile of shit gets $10,000 in ad revenue.
  • Tetra: are you also floored that MySpace gets 200,000 new spaces opened every day?

    It's not slow here, by the way. I'm at the Apple store in Palo Alto and it pulls up faster than most blogs do.
  • Scoble,

    I don't think it's so much that ugly designs are better, I think it's important to note that -usable- designs are better than pretty designs. If making a website pretty sacrifices usability then it probably isn't a good choice.

    Now making a website fast loading, usable, and aethetically pleasing to the eye?

    That's hard to do, which is why there are A-list web designers out there that get paid a lot of money to do such a thing.
  • Tetra: oh, and the fact that you think I'm hyping it means you aren't a very careful reader. I basically said this site has an ugly design. But, then, so does mine and you probably can't figure out why people come here either.
  • Larry: yeah, there definitely is something to usability, but there's something to being anti-corporate too. MySpace is popular BECAUSE it doesn't look "professional." It's approachable. And, it looks like something that would keep the parents away.
  • "Other people I know have found exactly the same thing"
    I think there are way too many factors involved to begin to attribute success to one thing (or even several), especially for blogging notables like yourself. And, sorry, you are making the leap because you seem to believe what he says, are transferring his success to a generality, and have promoted it. ;-)
  • Well, they say we have the "visual appeal of a pipe wrench", intended and taken as a compliment.

    Craig
  • Mo
    You know, ‘adding a bit of weight to your CSS file’ should make no odds to your mobile experience if you have media-specific stylesheets (which you do a point, though there's no ‘mobile’ stylesheet so many browsers will fall back to your ‘screen’ one).

    There's always a balance that can be struck. A site can be good-looking AND fast. A site can be good-looking AND useable. A site can be good-looking AND non-corporate. A site can be good-looking AND be well-optimised for search engines (which nowadays isn't very difficult at all—it's all about the content).

    It's not rocket science, it's just not a sleepwalk.
  • Dmad
    Myspace is not popular because of its anti-design, it's popular because of word of mouth. I rather doubt kids that go there went because they throught the design sucked. Like a previous poster said, they are sites are popular because they solve a need, not because of how they are or are not designed. If it's slick but yet usable then it doesn't matter how slick it is. No one cares about design as much as they do about usability. And you say you work for Microsoft, huh? sheesh.
  • larry
    Robert,

    Sure, but....

    What's at the root of it all?

    In my opinion its that the types of sites that you are talking about (inc. yours) are:

    * non threatening
    * speak with a human voice

    You must agree.
  • Some guy thinking his site does well because it is ugly does not make it true. This topic has become a trend recently. People say these sites are successful because of bad and/or ugly designs. That's just idiotic. That's like saying if I pee in your martini, you'll like it better. The most popular cars would be the ugly ones. People would only watch TV and movies with ugly people.

    I'm going to a geek dinner in Providence, RI soon and I sincerely hope nobody serves me a peetini. I prefer not to have distasteful things. If the rest of the world does and that's the key to these sites' success, then I'll say in a heartbeat the rest of the world is made up of tasteless morons. Is that how you think Microsoft should do their marketing? :P
  • I agree with Alex Foley. Should I have gone to that site, which may I add I have no reason to, I too would have questioned its credibility, as quite often people associate scam and phishing websites with such, dare I say low-quality designs.
  • met
    so this is the new 'it' ?
    Don't worry folks on the clean side, when this becomes the norm, clean/planned/interface will be the mavericks.

    It just keeps fluctuating, be flexible.

    And that site is successful, because the front page loads with more 'women looking for men' than 'men looking for women' (I tried refreshing 3 or 4 times to make sure :) )
  • Guido
    Hmm, Robert...

    The first impression I got when I entered that site was exactly "cluttered, hard to use", not the other way around. If he designed his site to be very usable and uncluttered, well... he might as well try again.

    >> "What’s the secret to his success? Ugly design."

    "Huh" I ask. So I put up an ugly website and instantly have revenue, while I'm dead if I have a pretty website? Have you even thought about this before posting it? Ugly sites _can_ be successful, but it has for sure nothing to do with them being ugly.

    And yours, by the way, is actually one of the less ugly Microsoft blogs. Seriously.
  • I think most of us tech people, realize that most of the world isn't used to nice Web 2.0 designs and crazy graphics. Most are used to not so great looking sites. Here's why craigs list, google, and plentyoffish (pof) work... they are easy to use and give the user what they want. Craigs list is free to sell, simple UI to find what I need, and works quickly. Google, gives me great search results, is easy to use, and works quickly. POF seems to do the same; I can find people, message them, and hopefully get what I'm looking for. Whether you have a beauty or a beast, it comes down to giving the user what they came to get and quickly. Just my two cents.

    -Jason L. Baptiste
  • Keith Patrick
    I dont' think it's the anti-marketing aspect per se; rather, it's that they aren't distracted by the bullshit that marketing folks try to insert into the product...trying to sell sizzle instead of steak. Look at Drudge or Aint-it-cool. Is it the fugliness of the site that brings people? No, because that's just another kind of marketing. It's what they're pushing and who their audience is; making them look nicer would help, but the audiences are so loyal to what they're pushing that they'll still show up. It's when marketing folks (and MS is getting REAL bad about this) start overanalyzing and overcontrolling the end result that things start going downhill.
  • MySpace is popular for two reasons.

    In the beginning, it offered unprecedented customization for people unfamiliar with web design, and unwilling to go the route of managing a home page.

    Metcalf's law has taken effect now - the value of MySpace today is proportional to the number of people on it. In order for someone to dethrone MySpace, they have to offer both the features and the population.
  • Goebbels
    "Why does anti-marketing design work? Well, for one, big companies will never do a site that doesn’t look pretty."

    That's not an explanation. That's completely non sequitar.

    "But, go deeper: we’re sick of committee-driven marketing."

    This isn't true. Companies still succeed with polished, highly-developed marketing.

    "That’s why my Channel 9 videos work."

    Oh, I see: someone's trying to rationalize his own crappy work because of recent criticism.

    "My design is ugly."

    Your design is no different than a million other template driven blogs.

    "It’s amazing how few corporate types get that the quality and engineering thought behind your HTML matters more than whether your site is pretty or not."

    You seem to be confusing yourself: is marketing only skin deep or is it also thoughtful design. You crap together your videos and use a basic template so you aren't doing much marketing. Google very much is marketing and it's very sophisticated and polished. Craigslist was admittedly crude because he didn't know any better but it continues to get more sophisticated while retaining thecrude look because people are familiar with it.

    However, the notion that crude or basic sites are anti-marketing is wrong, the notion that we are no immune to elaborate, superficial marketing is wrong, the notion that simple designs succeed because of it (without discussing the utility) or that sophisticated designs fail despite their content is wrong.

    So: NO!!
  • "you probably can’t figure out why people come here either"
    ----------
    Oh ya, that's easy...you're Microsoft. And, that gives you the travel budget to go smooze "every" conference/country, "A/B/C/D" list blogger on the planet. Can you honestly get up in the morning, look in the mirror and say that you'd be as popular if you weren't at Microsoft and Winer and the rest hadn't adopted you?
    Highly doubt it.
    ----------
    "MySpace is popular BECAUSE it doesn’t look “professional."
    Pure unadulterated "bullshit".
  • PXLated: I had 1,000 to 8,000 readers a day before I was here at Microsoft. I have no idea whether or not I would have ended up at 17,000, but the trend line was clear well before I joined Microsoft.
  • met
    But why did Microsoft recruit him or Winer adopt him ?
  • I think we shouldn't all assume one size fits all for every webpage. Some work best when they are slick (look at Apple and BMW and Tivo). At teh end of the day, if one website paradigm fit everyone, there would be no innovation in this regard. Let's try stick away from black and white arguments.
  • Met: why did Microsoft recruit me? Cause I sold an executive a Tablet PC (after meeting me in a newsgroup, ironically enough, not on my blog, but I was the only OEM rep who frequented the Tablet PC newsgroups so I stood out as someone who cared about customers and who understood the importance of hanging out where they hung out).

    Why did Winer adopt me? Cause I hired him to speak at a conference and I recognized early on that he was doing something brilliant and told him so.
  • james
    Bad design (visual, not code) is the new good design?
  • Tetra
    "I don’t think it’s so much that ugly designs are better, I think it’s important to note that -usable- designs are better than pretty designs."

    Ah, finally someone making sense! I don't think Robert understands that aesthetics and functionality aren't mutually exclusive.
  • I think that there are two issues here:

    1. Good design (as in attractive and easy to use/simple) will never hurt a cause, it can usually help.

    2. Staid and committee-based content will always kill.

    The Channel 9 videos work not because they look amateur, but because they look genuine and real. Real is always good, but if your videos were made with more professional equipment, they would still succeed. At least as long as the people in them weren't reading from a script.
  • Tetra: really? Ever been to an art museum? How is any of that stuff hanging on the wall functional? You CAN be aesthetic without having any functionality. You CAN be functional without being aesthetic. But, you CAN also be both. If that's what you want me to understand, fine, I get it.

    Bill: how professional, though? I find that there's a line where people stop being candid and start acting. Also, the more professional the equipment, the more expert the user needs to be to run it. So, now, you need a camera crew and all of a sudden Channel 9's genuineness evaporates.
  • Bill,

    The thing about good design is that it's in the eye of the beholder. Good design to a designer usually looks much different than good design to my eye does.

    Also, I don't live in the world the way I wish it to be, but how it actually is and Markus isn't the first guy to tell me his "ugly" site is doing better the uglier he makes it. (Better meaning, brings in more dollars in revenue and keeps users around longer).
  • Robert,

    Do you know what platform he uses for his forums on PlentyofFish? If not can you ask and post about it? Thanks!
  • Dave
    Doesn't the success of the design depend on the audience? For a teenager who is looking to rebel against the corporate world, an "anti-corporate" design will be attractive by definition. However, if you're a manager at a large corporation then you'll probably be turned off by the anti-corporate approach.

    What I think is interesting is how wide spread the non-corporate approach is becoming for consumer-driven sites. There seems to be an assumption that anyone using the net is anti-corporate, and I think these days that's a pretty big assumption.
  • Tetra
    "But, you CAN also be both. If that’s what you want me to understand, fine, I get it."

    Uh, congratulations?
  • Scoble, what you refering to is not really "marketing" itself. You are talking about one part of a marketing strategy. Marketing is not just how something looks. It involves relationships to customers, brand image, product placement, advertisment and many, many more. And this point was made previously in the comments, functional is not equal to ugly and "beautiful" is a perception everyone needs to make for themselves... You might think Google's startpage is ugly, I perceive it as slim, functional and good looking. MSN on the other hand appears to me personally very ugly. But it has more to do with the overload of content than the design!
    The point I want to make is that design is not really marketing, just one part of it. My two cents... ;-)
  • Innocent Bystander
    You know, for a web 2.0 beatiful ajax, cheerleader, new, new, new. This doesn't seem to mesh. Either something is beautiful and well done, or its slap dash and not. Ugly as a virtue? Only someone from MS would claim this.

    FWIW, you can do a fast loading beautiful site and provide media specific CSS to rearrange it. CSS is cheap (properly done) and can improve both load times and readability.

    FWIW, I did a little trolling on the fish site and found one woman who listed 11 conditions for compatibility. #11? Must not work at Microsoft. Ha!
  • "Either something is beautiful and well done, or its slap dash and not. Ugly as a virtue?"
    Innocent Bystander, it is all about perceptions...
  • I browsed www.plentyoffish.com for about 10 mins and twice I accidentally clicked on a google ads. Maybe that's the secret. Design your site so that people will inadvertanly click on ads.
  • Target, BMW, Apple aren't crafted by ad departments. They're crafted by the fact that everyone is involved in the brand. They live and breathe it. They actually do what you say: the brands were "done for the love of it"

    To say, that we've created 'bullsh*t filters' for good design ignores the huge design trend permeating society: Method products, the next Dodge Challenger, American Apparel, the rise of the prefab. There's so much love of good design these days - you may think you've cracked it with your website design, but to me the apparent absence of any care whatsoever, says that you have little love for what you do.
  • Brian S
    There's always been a trend among "get rich quick" sites for ugly design (highlighted text, huge fonts, etc) and I always wondered why they couldn't hire a good designer since they were making so much money. They figured out that ugly designs pull more revenue a long time ago.
  • Jason Hawryluk
    Sorry Robert, this post, and your opinion, is way off. To think otherwise is against human nature. Everything you do, eat , wear, use, see, smell, and touch lures you by design. The esthetics are the first lure, all other senses fall into place after that, unless of course there is a smell.

    Since we have yet to invent an internet, software product, or inanimate(none active) object that actually smell’s (good, or bad) I just can’t for the life of me get my head around this thinking. Microsoft smells of it, it’s everywhere.

    Poor design, on the contrary to what you have stated here, gives an impression of no thought, nor interest to the end user experience. Any successful product that would purposely do this, and then state that the bad design is by design, owes it’s successes to luck. Nothing more nothing less.

    If poor design was the secret ingredient in the work that we do, then nothing as we know it, would be as it is.
  • Piers, I agree with you. But, to do so, I must sound arrogant and elitist and hierarchical. Which is what good design does. What's the first thing I learned about laying out a photo page? One picture must be at least twice as big as the second. Why? Cause our minds like hierarchies and order.

    Anti-marketing (er, anti-corporate) design works because there are many people in society who want to be different.

    And, if you think that Apple, Target, or BMW's design isn't done by committees of brand experts, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you. They've done their work so well that you believe they do it all for love.

    Have you ever met anyone who has worked inside those companies?
  • FOF works despite it's design, not because of it.

    Some people do think style matters (see point 4).
  • erm that should be POF not FOF.
  • PaulIrving
    Here's another ugly design who seems to be doing well: http://our.imgseek.net/

    It's for a site for social photo bookmarking: you can search similar images, tag, rate and get recommendations.
  • Well, from where I stand, the secret of all the cash is simple: a subscription free dating site, SEO'd to serve ads from its competitor (subscription-based) dating sites.

    I think that the "ugly" matter is not central to it, except maybe for the fact that he doesn't have much fanciness to 'dilute' the keywords --- he even puts his site's title in an image with an ALT attribute that doesn't match it, giving, instead, more ad-friendly keywords. And speaking of ALT attributes, look at those of the users' pictures...
  • J. Random Poster
    Big companies do ugly sites ALL THE TIME, they just don't REALIZE it. Had a look at the main CNN or MSNBC pages lately? Hideous!
  • Robert, I think you're on to something, but at the same time, you're muddling a couple of things. Communication that comes across as direct rather than overly manicured will cut through a lot of bull***t filters.

    But here's where IMHO you get muddled:

    Good design isn't necessarily pretty or decorative. In fact, many pretty sites are prime examples of bad design.

    One of the most useful definitions of design is from Charles Eames: "A plan for arranging elements to accomplish a particular purpose." You cannot judge design without knowing the purpose. Google from day one had one of the most brilliant designs ever put on the Web.

    Good design is not necessarily aided nor hindered by collaboration. One person can do crap. Ten people can do great design. It's all a matter of purpose.

    Fast-loading is a useful purpose for anything on the Web. It is served by light-weight CSS, light-weight images. Your blog isn't ugly -- or bad design for serving a purpose.

    Fast-posting without a lot of foodle-doodling is another useful purpose.

    Given the social purpose of plentyoffish.com, it does well by not upstaging the posts of the participants with irrelevant esthetical crap.

    Brands in general don't need to be beautiful. The three you singled out, however, Apple, BMW, and Target, have adopted design as a marketable feature. Not that there's anything wrong with that. In fact, it's working well for them.

    As for dismissing love as part of communications... If that's preposterous, then get to the Microsoft marketing committees quickly. They're spending a lot of ad dollars trying to "passion" onto the meaning of the Microsoft brand. But it's not preposterous for people to have passion in what they do. Or love.
  • More than once, I’ve been presented with the following sentiment: “we don’t want our Web site to look too good.” From Internet executives to the leadership of Web 2.0 start-ups, the rationale is that when a site seems too “professional” it loses its appeal. It feels corporate and no longer genuine -as if authenticity can be communicated by lack of visual refinement. There are of course plenty of examples to point to (Craig’s List, MySpace, del.icio.us).

    Without getting into the typical form vs. function debate (yes, sites need to be useful and usable!), I’ll explain things the way I do whenever a client of mine makes this assertion. First of all, dismissing visual design as just a matter of “making things pretty” cuts off your ability to communicate with your customers at the knees. Design is a solution to communication not mere styling. Each product (via its interface design) needs to “tell” users what features it offers (its utility), how to use those features (its usability), and why they should care (its desirability).

    Second, even if you deliberately don’t think about your site’s personality during the development process, you will end up with one anyway. The colors, content, and visual elements (or lack of all three) of your Web site all make an impression on your audience, intentional or not. Therefore, it is in your best interests to be aware of the personality you are creating for your site and make certain it is telling the story you want.

    Yet many sites with a poor visual presentation remain popular on the merits of their content alone. But does their audience enjoy bumping through the site’s awkward graphics and hard to read labels? No, but the personality of the content (it could be high quality, funny, worthwhile, and more) makes the rest bearable. Would their audience be happier if the personality of the presentation matched the personality of the content? Of course. They like the content, don’t they? Such a site would be well served to improve their presentation. Not only would it enrich their current customers’ experience, but a presentation that reflects the site’s content would tell the site’s story to newcomers as well. Hey, we have quality content, come take a look.
  • It's not just the design that's ugly, but some of the posts, too, althought I guess he can't do a whole lot to "fix" user created junk. This one's from the front page:
    "looking fo a real nigga
    Yea, wus up this ya girl sexyfidethang and i wanna holla at the real niggas so let me take a second to tell yall bout me, bet!"
  • You've got to be kidding, right, Robert? PlentyofFish is about sex and dating--not about design or anti-design...

    Take a look at my site for anti-design (siliconvalleywatcher.com,) my buddy Om at Gigaom.com has a beautifully pristine site and I think it looks way too corporate. I like mine, it's far from perfect, just like me :-)
  • Alan Silva, a one-time bassist with Cecil Taylor and then the leader of his own thirteen-piece orchestra, made the point in an interview I did with him for Rolling Stone.
    "I don't want to make music that sounds nice," Silva told me. "I want to make music that opens the possibility of real spiritual communion between people. There's a flow coming from every individual, a continuous flow of energy coming from the subconscious level.
    http://www.cosmoetica.com/OO4-RL1.htm

    Difficult to see the world bottom-up, but that how hierarchies IS now.
  • Goebbels
    "But, to do so, I must sound arrogant and elitist and hierarchical. Which is what good design does."

    I thought this was bad; get it straight? By positing the notion that anti-marketing as a marketing strategy you have created a marketing strategy that's more disingenious than any other by claiming it's anything other than another marketing strategy. Now, you say you need to be arrogant to be good? No, you have to be arrogant (and foolish) to create the bad impression "marketing" has as a word even though it's simply about maximizing your product's market.
  • JoeVolcano
    I don't think its anti-marketing. Its just less. This site is "just enough" The value proposition is clear and on the first page. "This is a 100% Free Dating Service - NO Charges EVER" Just like google it presents its "stuff" with a minimal of supporting crap. Speaking your truth - its not anti marketing, it the right amount. This might not work in other markets, but for dating/sex and hightly desired free services (myspace.com) the functionality is more important than the marketing. (Can people use it effectively) myspace is a great example - it isn't very spiffy - doesn't work very well - its servers are overwhelmed so its perpetually slow - yet it still gets used ALOT. (Are we back to the sex thing again?)

    Maybe there is another category for frugal marketing...

    As for the tech/platform - I have deployed 100's of sites on Windows (ColdFusion mainly) and ASP. Like anything else - you have to dive in deep enough to "own" it, make it secure and work for you. It DOES work (well!).

    Toodles.
  • Wanderer
    Something that everyone seems to be missing, including Mr. Scoble:

    The PoF website is not actually selling anything to its users. It does not, in fact, depend on them doing much more than just looking around. Its revenue comes from the Google ads. In short, it doesn\'t matter if the site is credible, appealing, or much else, so long as it gets huge numbers of hits (it\'s basically offering \"free sex\", of course it gets traffic) and some of those people click on another site\'s ad.

    Its low-budget, amateurish appearance may be working here because it encourages visitors to go elsewhere. And what\'s the best route to \"elsewhere\" when you\'re on PoF and looking for a hot date? Click on of those Google ads conveniently placed on every page. They may actually have made \"lure the visitors here, then drive them away screaming\" into a viable business model.
  • Dealey Plaza where Kennedy became hamburger..., or the Apple Store?

    History is the moment, and design is truth in saying. The essential fact is that people imitate success, amnd the world goes to hell.
  • I have also found that most of my sites get better click through rates on adsense and the like if the site is pretty plain, ugly, etc. The ads stick out more... maybe we'll see more of these!
  • I really think that PlentyOfFish success was from the owners knowledge of SEO (Seach Engine Optimization). But you're right, if a site is simple but the loading time and functionality work perfectly, all you need is traffic. It has always been the 90% factor of a website's success is from the traffic. Just my own opinion. Thanks guys.
  • I think Markus at PlentyOfFish.com has it figured out. He's offering the service of a basic human need and he's doing it for free...totally free, not tricks.

    Sure it's ugly, but it's one guy's site with no corporate BS. He just did it to provide the service.
  • I remember the movie "Crazy People" and the anti marketing strategy...same concept.
    I think it will work with a large dose of good luck...
  • People do not visit a site for the design, whether it's pretty or ugle. It's not that ugly design makes money, it's that the site must not upstage the ads. Most TV commercials cost more than the TV shows they run on, and many are more entertaining.

    Another factor to consider, the site mentioned has mass links (300k in yahoo alone, 10k in msn, 4k in google), all natural links of course 8-P. With that many links and traffic, to put up a graphically intense site would kill his bandwidth.

    So of course most high traffic, successful sites are low graphics with simple designs. Load fast, get links, show off your ads. Very simple formula.
  • I guess secret behind plentyoffish is search engine search for anydating keyword in any search engine and plentyoffish always on top . Get back to work guys to make $10000 per year lol
  • Craigslist and Plentyoffish and Friendster (v1.0) worked because they were unassuming, humble and almost anticommercial looking. They weren't selling. People hate to be sold to but they love to buy. We're reaching a turning point in consumer marketing (once again). People want recommendations and referrals and...they don't want the pitch, the USP, glossy ad, the close. Craigslist and Plentyoffish offer tons of utility with no BS...and no cost. Nice. People rave!
  • Oh, I run www.onlinepersonalswatch.com and have been in the online personals industry since 1998 btw. I worked for Friendster, Friendfinder and Cupid amongst others.
  • Why not just setup a site around the highest paying keywords?
    Top paying keywords
  • That would explain why DrudgeReport also is so popular, its the ugliest site I've ever seen, yet, busy and well visited.
  • Not only drudge but www.andrewshaffer.com has taken off with a similar design as drudge. www.menuserve.com has a design for success!
  • that post above should have been www.drewsnewsroom.com not the andrewshaffer.com
  • Dan
    Excellent site. Well done.
  • Well I guess his mailboxes must be pretty full. But, I found his phone! Hope I get through.

    For Canadians, plentyoffish is pretty sticky. After all, who can help looking around to see if there is a better deal there. Granted, anyone else may not have that reaction. But that might change once it spreads to any particular readers geographic location.
  • It's not anti-marketing marketing that's the reason for the bad design.

    It's the fact that if you have loads of crappy fonts all over the place the GOOGLE TEXT ADS look like they are internal links or editorial links and people are more likely to click on them.

    People confuse the real content from the ads.

    If you have a nice clean design, the ads always stand out as ads and people ignore them.

    Chris
  • Just been doing a view source...

    The page uses font tags with the face, size, color, etc for things like titles of posts and uses a lot of tables.

    Most of the presentation seems to be handled in the html page rather than in a CSS file (which would only need to be loaded once and then it would be stored in the browser).

    This would argue against the simple design being used for speed. You could *decrease* the weight of these pages with correct use of CSS and hence speed up loading.

    He could further decrease the weight by getting rid of all the nested tables in the design and replacing them with divs.

    Not that any of this really matters - the main reason why he's kept the design the way it is, is because more people will click on the ads which is the main aim of the site (as well as retaining visitors - who probably don't care if it's not the fasted loading site in the world).

    A lot of well SEO'ed sites like this have not been 'designed'. I'm sure if a nicely designed site used the same SEO tactics it would do just as well in terms of visitors - although would probably get less clicks on the ads.
  • Seems everyone has a theory why my site is big. Keep in mind less then half a percent of visitors per day are new. Sub 80 cent CPM per day, is on the extreme low end of monitization via adsense. I care more about making the site big and useful then milking it for $.

    I think the most impressive thing is I have only 4 servers. NO other dating site this size has less then 200 servers and 200 staff and a 1 million in technical costs per month.

    1. 1 DB server
    2. 1 Web server running IIS 6, handles 1 million pageviews an hour at peak. No static pages at all, way to slow. All pages are Gzipped on the fly.
    3. 1 Mail Server. Handles 1 million emails/day and also has a webserver that handles a Instant messager. That translates to 4-5 million polling pageviews/hour at peak.
    4. 1 Image server, Like all major sites it serves images to a massive content distribution system/cache.
    5. Outbound traffic is 70 to 100mb/sec If it was uncompressed it would probably run at 140mb/sec

    My design my be bad, my html not so good etc. But this site was started as a little side project to teach myself asp.net and to provide something for free. I certainlly didn't expect to create a accidental dating empire. I'm just proud of the fact I was able to code every line of code in this site, design and write every page and just create something huge that is used by millions.
  • Wow I just finished reading the first part of this, sounds like Marcus is a real genious.
    http://www.tnareview.com
  • Awesome, I could only dream about making so much a day :)
  • I don't think the site is ugly at all. I think it's intuitive.
  • Seems a more recent story that is a ripoff of yours:

    http://www.site-reference.com/articles/Website-...

    is gaining a lot of attention (slashdot, digg).
  • P-Brain
    It sure isn't his domain name that makes it successful. Plenty Offish?

    P-Brain
  • eDate.com seems to be along the same lines as plenty of fish. eDate is a totally free, fast loading desing that appears to be attracting thousands of users each day. One advantage over plent o is definately the nem.

    I have spoken with the owner of edate and he is not corporate and he just wants to offer a totally free dating service that takes on the big boys. It is currently pretty new so he is transferrring thousands of users over from another site.

    I met my boyfriend on www.edate.com about a month ago. Does anybody understand how they stay in business without charging any money? I didn't have to pay a cent and it seems just as good as any other dating site that I paid for.

    Just thought I'd let people know about edate.com because alll of the other dating sites rope you in to paying some fee and edate didn't.
  • Your thoughts on design might work for blogs but that's about it. I don't think you would willingly hand your credit card number over to a site that looked too crappy or illegitemate. A bank couldn't have a site that looked like craigslist.

    However, I do agree that for certain kinds of sites simple "bad" design is okay. Craigslist is a complex site with a lot of content and the design should get out of the way of users who just want to get to what they want. But even that concept comes back to an old graphic design theory: form follows function.
  • zz
    This font is too difficult to read, so I didn't read the rest of the article. So much for your theory?
  • Scoble, you should stick to talking about things you know about. Sites that are ugly are successful despite their design. They have a great service or feature to offer that overcomes the hideous appearance.
  • Markus Frind is a smart guy. In the end - who cares what the design looks like, if he makes a profit and finds success then he has a great business. The only thing which I find important is for the site to load fast and it is easy to use.
  • joe
    eBay, Craigs List are not great designed sites but they are profitable because they know who their target mkt is and they provide a great service. It is all about traffic.
  • "Well, for one, big companies will never do a site that doesn’t look pretty."

    Are you forgetting that your ugly design examples -- eBay, Google, and MySpace (owned by Fox) -- are all big companies?
  • sharon
    I predict that eDate over the next couple of years will overtake all of the big guys. eDate.com is totally 100% free with no catch. It's got a great chart room which I use a lot to meet people and it's a quick running site with an easy to navigate design. eDate.com will be one of the most popular dating sites out there. I have spoken with the owner about his current developing and marketing platform and I am confident to say that www.eDate.com will be a huge competitor in the online dating and free online dating industry.
  • Simple and uncluttered is not the opposite of beautiful. You can have both, you should have both, and both is better. Ugly is not ideal. Ugly is a copout.
  • Wait, let me get this straight. You didn't add a font declaration to your CSS to save space, but your header image is 24kb?

    Someone tells me you haven't a clue.
  • really interesting story, actually i've learned quite some good stuff from it, i'm doing pretty much the same way.
  • Warren
    I think plenty of fish is a little bit of a special case. It is Free Dating and it has an authenticity about it.

    Compare the demand for 'Commercial Pretty Porn' and 'Amature Porn' the latter completely changed the porn idustry - why - because it was more authentic and there for more in line with what people could believe and i suppose fantasise about.

    With plenty of fish (and even craigs list) the design (or lack there of) actually helps you associate with the person on the other end. Its about them and not about a brand that they are wrapped in.

    When it comes to people and relationships do as the porn idustry had to do and remove the glam and let the people talk.
  • Please end this uninformed rubbish. This says it all...

    http://www.airbagindustries.com/archives/009000...
  • People don't use a website because it looks good or because it looks bad. Are men drawn to playboy.com because it has good graphic design or because it looks ugly? No, they go there for the content. Visual design has nothing to do with it. People use websites based on the content and the services they provide, duh. Now bad design is bad for a number of reasons. One of them is that it is hard to use a poorly designed site because it isn't thought out carefully. When people can't use a website they're not going to stick around or come back, unless there is some compelling reason. I quit going to nytimes.com to read their articles because they produced RSS feeds. Now their RSS feeds are what I go to. If a web designer is all confused about whether or not to make a site look like crap or make it look good in order to increase traffic, they should probably use their time figuring out a way to make people want to go there in the first place.
  • Tim Swan
    This is typical commentary from people that think design=beauty. Design is NOT just throwing a pretty wrapper around crap and calling it good. Typical opinionated post with nothing to back it up.
  • This from a judge for a recent design contest.

    I hate when people with infulence perpetuate completely assinine ideas like this.

    You make a claim like this and then support it with completely ridiculous claims. "MySpace is successful because it's ugly." COME ON! You can't seriously believe some of this stuff.
  • Am
    (excuse my poor english)
    a definition of design:
    Design is a set of fields for problem-solving that uses user-centric approaches to understand user needs to create successful solutions that solve real problems.
    you're talking of sites which are great because of their excelent functions and saying that they are good because of being ugly.
    the correct knowledge of the design principles should make your webpage much faster, uncluttered, authentic and user friendlier than it is now. When you attain that, it's inerent beauty is visible.
    this blog (not mine): http://simpleydone.com/
    is much lighter, simpler and user friendlier than yours AND it's also better looking.
    In my native language we don't have the word design, we use the english word. Maybe if you had to explain to your grandparents what design is, like I had, you would start understanding what it's really about - not ugly or beautiful, nike or coke, but about improving comunication. it seems that the ironic problem with design is that it's meaning is poorly comunicated.
  • Robert, I know you've done your best to intellectualize everything, but you come across as a guy who can't stand random success or the place where it's been.

    Nobody but you and a *very* small minority gives a rat's arse how that site looks or whether it validates or not.

    Everybody else goes there for the reasons 99.99% of humnaity would; for information. Hell, I'm thinking of signing up there myself :)
  • There must be an InductiveArgument Control in .NET 2.0...
  • Wow. Plentyoffish.com has lots of hits. It's probably the butt-ugly design. Or the sluts.

    So your argument for not bothering with design is to repeat a tired truism: "It's all about content". Sexy-talking tramps = lots of hits from desperate losers. Craigslist and Google offer great, well-delivered content. Sure, you can a snotload of money from great content and ugly design. But can you do better if you have great content and a nifty design? Why not have both? That's the real question.

    I don't like marketing geeks very much either, but just because marketing can be lame and over-the-top, doesn't mean you just throw it in the trash altogether. There needs to be a middle ground, dude.
  • The anti-marketing concept is an interesting one, certainly one with substance. Personally, I think this has less to do with the design and more to do with the feeling that someone is behind it, not something (as in a corporation).
  • RG
    this page is so ugly I could hardly stand to stay on it long enough to write this comment.
  • Ben
    Your site looks ugly because you're not a good designer, you don't have the brain to do a good design, sure you might have good content and that's great but it would be much better if it looked good too. When we started MySpace we didn't have a designer, only programmers. If we had more time it would look better and we're working on a better looking design now. We want MySpace to be more like PurVolume (great content, great design). Beerzie is right, Plentyoffish.com only gets a massive amount of traffic because of the sluts and all the desperate losers.
    Your site is so ugly, get your act together.
  • max
    lol, i agrre ben
  • Gaara
    What a horrible argument, un-design makes succes. Very stupid, google did get succesful because of bad design but because of a great search engine. What company in their right mind would allow a product that purposely looks bad to be released? We don't have a bulls**t meter, wtf are you talking about? Since when would humans think that something that is aesthetically pleasing is bad? While your article is somewhat intresting it is one of the saddest non sequiturs i have ever seen. Don't get bad ideas into people heads, do you think Apple would be where it is now without aesthetically pleasing devices and OS? I don't think so. Don't clutter the web with trash opinions that are just based off of coincidence.
  • You know, there are a lot of ugly sites out there that aren't very successful. A lot, in fact. Seems to me this guy's success is despite his aesthetic, not because of it.
  • Gaara
    Yeah but are saying they are succesful because of not being aestheticly pleasing? Would they be succesful if they looked the same but what they did was really bad. In these cases its not beauty but content. Read this article http://www.andyrutledge.com/bad-design.php, this guy knows what he is talking about.
  • I am not an expert yet but my website is so pretty
    and performing very good on adsense. Not too much traffic but %20 - %30 click through rate.. Not too bad for an amateur :)
  • Talktechno
    Check this one its better:

    http://www.talktechno.com
  • I think that people are looking at this from two extremes.

    Either a site looks awesome and is slow-loading and not as successful as the anti-aesthetic quick loading ugly site.

    I don't think the above to be true however I do agree that elements of both should be kept in mind during creation.

    I think for the last 10 years we've been arse backwards about how we tackled online communication in general.

    I would guess 90%+ of the websites in existance were designed "before" they even knew what message they wanted to portray, "before" the content was written and the IA plan was in place to get this content across efficiently to the user.

    On top of that there has obviously been very limited usability testing and no long-term consistency online 'period'.

    I guess my point here is that while I agree sites should be lightweight and fast-loading, I also firmly believe that the problem is not solved by creating "ugly-anti-marketing" sites.

    This problem is solved by well thought out IA which clearly communicates your well written message/content. This can be accomplished only in conjunction with extensive usability testing.

    In the end I can see now reason you cannot have a well thought out, visually appealing yet easy to use website that offers a good 'and' effortless experience.

    Wow that was a mouthful.
  • What is the strongest word in the marketing dictionary?? FREE

    "Ugly by design" is branding. Low cost product branding almost necessitates a no frills packaging to hammer home the message. Go to any super market in the country and look in the cereal isle. Next to the Rice Krispies is a plain box with A&P Crisy Rice in it. The box looks like crap but who cares, it tastes the same and is half the price. Could A&P make a more attractive package?? Yes of course but that would make it less recognizable amoung all the other brands already competing with Kelloggs.

    Some people only shop at Prada while others love the value of Walmart. Both get dressed every morning.

    POF is the generic brand of Match.com
    Craigslist is the generic brand of Monster.com
    and Google is just a freak of nature.

    Should anyone really be suprised that POF is making 10,000 a day? Not really. I would be much more interested in finding out how they marketed a free service to create the userbase that supports that revenue stream now.
  • Aleks
    Not so ordynary site - look to html sourse - in meta description there is part of page tekst - man knows what he did.
  • The site is succesful with AdSense. And to be successful with AdSense, you have to make people want to leave.

    Let's not over-generalize beyond that.
  • I'm afraid, I have to agree with Alex Foley. The anti-marketing design is good for the big old sharks who do not have to prove their point with expensive design. I never heard about Plenty of Fish before, and for me it looks more like just another scraper site built to make money with AdSense. Does it look credible for me? Hell, no.
  • Евгений
    Круто!
  • I don't believe it's successful because it's ugly. It's successful because:

    1. It's a FREE dating service, unlike most of all the others. Wonder how successful he'd be if he were SELLING something.
    2. Online dating services are in great demand.
    3. As another comment pointed out, "...the fact that if you have loads of crappy fonts all over the place the GOOGLE TEXT ADS look like they are internal links or editorial links and people are more likely to click on them.

    People confuse the real content from the ads.

    If you have a nice clean design, the ads always stand out as ads and people ignore them."

    I've already read here of people saying they accidenatlly clicked on Adsense Ads, thinking they were part of the site's content. The site is successful with Adsense, not specifically because it's ugly. Let's not confuse causation and correlation; they're two entirely different things!
  • Charrito
    haha

    this is dumbest shit I've read in a while...

    like one your readers so astutely pointed out, design is not just about making things pretty. I know this might be difficult for some of you to understand, but good design is visual problem solving. good design is not decoration. i think a lot of people assume that design = haphazard esthetic decisions. nope. good design has methodologies for solving problems just like good OOP does. good design doesn't place form over function in the way many software engineers seem to think it does.

    another one of the above posts has pointed out that the anti-brand is indeed a brand. to assume that minimalist page design like craiglist has somehow escaped percieved visual trends to elevate its user experience above esthetics and escape the laws of branding is terribly uninformed, unrealistic, and arrogrant. people know shitty design when they see it. they might be willing to put up with it, but you're not fooling anyone.

    "oh wait! our shitty looking site has stands as a beacon of integrity in sea of trendy, slick looking over-designed site! yeah! thats the ticket! when people see our no frills layout that looks like 1996 doodoo, they'll KNOW WE'RE KEEPIN IT REAL!"

    right. next time i need to craft a brand, I'm going to call some software engineers! preferbly ones from the company that has the most shallow, confused, and awful brand of the modern age.

    furthermore, if form over function is your mantra, you should scratch myspace off your list of shining examples. have you actually looked at that markup? take a look and get back to me. the ONLY remarkable thing about myspace is the sheer number of people who are using it.

    kind of like MS products....
  • actually, there's only design. ugly/graceful/etc have a form follows function relationship.
    anti-brand >is brand
  • as a for instance, there's an implementation issue on this site..a comment written in notepad won;t drop correctly into the post....as noted from my post above.

    actually, there's only design. ugly/graceful/etc have a form follows function relationship.
    anti-brand >is brand
  • brand is not appearance but identity. from the domain name on down the page, that site says "it won't cost a thinhg to try. nobody ios expecting much. relax. u can't win if u don't enter." whether the designer intuitively knew that, or stumbled into it, or it reflects his core personality--which is my guess as somebody who reps artists and does branding--he tapped into a market of people who randomly will cruise around target as long as they feel comfortable and aren't asked to buy anything, but won't go to the galleria. notice the key point in the discussion: revenue from ad clicks, not commited relationships.
    i mention target because bridgesolution has an alliance with their branding team.
    i agree most web designers miss the point. becuase in reality there is only design. bmw doesn;t make dump trucks, and print isn't the web; and newspapers aren't magazines.
    we use the concept of having designers interact with implementers. the dialogs can be amusing.
  • Rulf
    Yeah, of course, Apple, Target, BMW would make billions and billions more if only they would let their web sites be ugly. And Microsoft, living proof of the overwhelming selling power of bad taste, would instantly go tits up if they'd come up with something, ANYTHING, beautiful.

    What a cruel world.
  • erickarns
    What a load of bull-ish. Look at Blogger.com -> beautiful, functional, fast... mm hmmm.
  • Matt G, Boston, MA
    A lot of missing the point here. I agree OVERdesigning can waste resources and kill traffic, but I doubt UGLY automatically = success.

    Guaging how much visual appeal draws an audience is the first step in a successful (ugly OR pretty) design.

    For example: the charm of your favorite hole-in-the-wall diner would be ruined by yards of velvet and mood lighting. BUT would most people pay extra for the ABSENCE of velvet and great service?

    Plentyoffish doesnt' make big $$$ because its got ugly design, its a big, FREE dating service for crying out loud! (and, I'll be the clients with the most traffic are the best looking!)
  • Ach
    Has anyone here read Don Norman's books on design ... in particular, the one titled "Emotional Design"? You guys who argue that functionality is the only thing that matters are missing the point. It's not JUST functionality... aesthetics is a part of who we are as humans. I agree that people will put up with crappy websites as long as they are usable but that doesn't say anything about the emotional state of the user. Products from Apple and BMW are bought in large part due to their visual appeal. The web is no different. Usability comes first but don't destroy good aesthetics.
  • Sure...let's just dumb everything down and go for street cred? That may work for a free online dating service that's designed to be a SEO whore, but design aesthetics DO count for consumers of more upscale brands.
  • The "ugly-design" theory is the biggest load of bull I've seen in years!
  • Stylo
    Yo! S**it #$!@er. The site gets 10,000 hits cos its a "F R E E" Dating Site. And it got all tits and asses all over it.

    I bet you can't design. Google is used so much cos it works best, not because it has no design. Design isn't just colors its a way to communicate.
  • I think the biggest theme is not making a site ugly, but keeping it simple, uncluttered, and lightweight. It doesn't have to be ugly to accomplish these things.
  • This guy is full of crap and its sad to see. No room for someone who lies.
  • Jay
    What I think is funny is that no one is noticing what this guy said from the beginning:

    "We trust things more when they look like they were done for the love of it rather than the sheer commercial value of it."

    Yet the rest of the time all he's talking about is CA$H CA$H CA$H. Your design goals permeate through your corporation, Robert. You are an excellent choice for M$.
  • There is some theory about ugliness that results in high revenue from Google Adsense, but isn't a measurement of being a successful or better as a website, and it's not a standard at all that ugly websites are the successful ones at all aspects. Theory claims that the whole matter comes from people dislike the ugly website therefore they click-off and run away to other websites, which are more likely those ones which appear in front of them inside Google Adsense units!
  • Jon
    I think what people "trust" is all completely subjective. I took a look at plentyoffish. I've never heard of it before, but if I had just randomly come across it, it's exactly the kind of service I wouldn't trust. Some people may "trust things more when they look like they were done for the love of it rather than the sheer commercial value of it" but I certainly don't and I am sure I'm not alone. I trust a company/brand that looks like they know what they're doing.
    And I don't know how many times I've said myspace would be so much better (more enjoyable to use) if it implemented a means of creating pages/profiles that weren't absolutely horrendous to look at. Half the time, I can barely read people's pages and I am always baffled that they can't see that for themselves.

    "Maybe MySpace is kicking blogging’s behind because most blogs are simply too pretty!"

    There's no way that's true. First off, most blogs aren't that pretty. Most of the time, they're just based off templates (that are easier to implement than myspace templates). It's the networking nature of myspace that makes it insanely popular. It's popular in spite of it's appearance, not because of it. No one ever said, "Have you seen myspace? It looks like $h!t. You should check it out!" (The same goes for google and craigslist, which by the way I found craigslist unusable on my first visit. Where do I look first? This looks like crap for such a popular site. Am I on the right page? ) I've found that most users don't even use the blogging feature on myspace. It seems to be predominantly used for simply making comments (despite the email feature) that consist of obnoxiously large images, animated gifs, or WMV clips. Setting up a blog doesn't allow you to search for and find old friends or acquaintances...or have an entirely superficial friendship with your favorite band. Myspace does. Blogging requires creative thought on a regular basis. Myspace doesn't.

    This is too long. I simply disagree.
  • i want 2000-5000 real visitors daily.
    its possible?
  • Antimarketing design is taking it a bit to an extreme but in general I totally agree. My partner and I just sold a domain for just north of 30k the other month and it was almost purely a 'text based' layout.

    Simple works and is effective.
  • Yep, them's the ropes...

    But i think it has more to do with being simple and easily-navigated than 'being ugly'. Google is clean and proffesional, but I wouldn't exactly call it amateurish. Many other clean, proffesional sites have had outstanding success.
  • Nul
    The examples you give are a bit off, like google... it's a search engine, thats it's function and thats all you need for it visually. You also failed to mention the fact that google also had an inbuilt spell checker earlier than the competition which is a big part of its popularity.

    The arguement is too simplistic to be valid, depends on the sites purpose and functionality. End of story really.
  • Nul
    BTW, you have about 125k of images on your front page atm yet rant about not adding a few words of code for a font.

    ?
  • Nul: fonts ALWAYS load before images. You'll always see the text on a Web page before the images load. So, text size is MUCH more important than image size.
  • Sometimes, visitors preferred the look rather than the content :-)
  • Nul
    Re Robert Scoble

    Yes, but you're taliking 1 small, incy wincy, tiny bit of code to call a font that wouldn't even be noticed (not like you have to DL the font itself). If you are purely after readability and functionality, then a sans serif font would probably be better re both causes.

    BTW, just as a side note we share the same surname. Does yours originate from the Cornwall lot?
  • JBH
    yeah myspace is pop but only pop. like the pussycat dolls. you gonna ask then to help you write a song like leonard cohen? of course not. They can't write GOOD music, only pop music. Why is pop music so big? because it's consumed by mostly unsophisticated children between 9 and 16 in order to kill time between growth spurts.
    for money making go for the lowest common denominator. mass appeal. appeal to the dumb. if you want to "say" something more important opt for a more personal approach. picasso pulls a good price these days and due to his innovative ideas could probably command a lot of dosh for an appearance/consult if he was still alive.
    pop is boring. people eventually grow up.
  • Не вижу смысла делать что-то лучше, если оно выполняет свои функции на 100%, поэтому если дизайн не отвратительный, то значит пользоваться сайтом будут. Иначе если сайт плохой, то ему не поможет навороченный дизайн. И точка. Sorry for my english ;)
  • You know that all of the designers out there how disagree are in it for their job-security. Good design is good, but usually ergonomics taken 2nd (or 10th) to the designers ego.

    Love, Me
  • I don't know man, but I think the only one beeing able to build and run such a network single handed is - me.
    but if the story is true and he really did that he deserves anybodys respect until the end of time.
  • bad typo, I meant: ... everybody's respect until the end of time ...
  • i think its all a question of the business field, i guess it works with dating oder adult sites, but if a insurance company, whats looking für a business consultant, likes to see poor design with weak navigation and other things...
  • Nul
    Re Brad

    You're very out of touch with what design is. You're also a little out of touch if you think a person will only disagree because they're a working designer.
  • "He says that sites that have ugly designs are well known to pull more revenue, be more sticky, build better brands, and generally be more fun to participate in, than sites with beautiful designs."

    Well, thats an fact! If a site have everithing goods to offer for the user, there is no reason to click on adds from google. The key is sucking traffic from google, make the user curiously to earn clicks...
  • ...ich kann mich dem Kommentar von Oliver nur anschliessen. Hypes und Gelaber, Nachgemache und abwarten - selbst eine Idee haben und "just do it!"
  • Somehow i don't think i could ever subscribe to Scoble's view on website aesthetics.As far as i'm concerned ugly is ugly and a complete turnoff.
  • some guy
    Let's not forget the oft-quoted aphorism:

    "Appeal to the classes, and you'll dine with the masses.
    Appeal to the masses, and you'll dine with the classes."

    ...

    People with bad taste feel ostracized by good design. They know that it's above them, on all levels - intellectually, aesthetically, emotionally, financially. They flock to bad things - American cars, television, fast food, sweat pants, pop music, MySpace - because THEY ARE TOO STUPID TO UNDERSTAND GOOD DESIGN. There, I've said it - the ultimate value judgment.

    If you disagree, I want you to walk out on the street and look into the eyes of the first person you meet. There's a 99% chance that this person's entire soul will be on display. It will be clear to you that they're an idiot, with bad taste, with money to burn. They don't know the difference between a serif, a sans-serif, and a slab-serif - but they are affected by it.

    It's a fact: successful business owners exploit distasteful idiots. Apple Computer makes the best computer hardware and software in the world, but they will never sell more computers than bargain-basement Dell. You have to work harder to please customers who can discern good design, but lucky for Dell, those people are a very small minority of the population.
  • David Bowman
    Sadly, Scoble is right. There's a lot of arguing above, but nobody cares about the previous comments, because the arguments are over intellectualized. Only designers care about such arguments. Scoble's viewpoint is quantified once and for all by the following pair of irrefutable economic truths:

    1) people with bad taste > people with good taste

    2) more customers = more money

    Scoble, you can close the comments now.
  • jc
    maybe simple and plain designs create more ad-revenue because people think there will be a better site that they can view when they click on the ad..
  • Unconscious or conscious: Everybody tend to imitate.
  • sometimes back to nature is a best thing. the same like simple design. But still it depends on the topic of your sites. Some site need simple design but other sites could need more attractive design such as using flash , animated gif , etc.
  • Wise Guy
    No, no, no. I disagree totally! The said websites are success not because of their ugly design, but because of their idea, because it was something new and viral.

    The reason for their ugly design is the fact that they all started as a homework project. Now that they gone big, why would they change their look?

    It does not mean that you can build an ugly site and be successfull. No you won't.

    And who said that simple, uncluttered, fast loading design can't be pretty?

    Get real people!
  • This is probably the illogical blog I've ever read.
  • This is the excellent site.
    Adult Dating Online Community
    http://www.adultxdating.com/
  • Ryan
    The anti-marketing design is becoming popular.
    www.aretheyopen.com is using it, and they are doing pretty well.
  • Grant
    I will tell you that - screw ugly sites! This is not the stone age, you know. Even that I am not a design geek and don't understand the idea behind XHTML, CSS certification and other stuff like that, I still prefer good looking sites over bad looking ones. Why? Because people who make their sites look good care about their visitors. Care about tomorrow, not about the early 90's. And just in relation to this topic, I accidentally landed on an interesting story last week. Boy, was I agree with that guy. You bet I was! And even that I am not completely aware what the hell web 2.0 is I appreciate their effort to bring some light in this business. I am not sure how their profits will look in the end, but as for me, if I was a dating site user, I'd prefer their service, that's for sure!
  • Wow, has this generated comment! Had to get to entry 63 by Tom Foremski for the denouement though. Sex sells and drives the net like nothing else - ask plentyoffish to set up another site for paperclips and compare. Buy you a drink if it works to the same degree...
    Also think your marketing story would, on the other hand, make for a more intriguing article.
    Cheers.
  • I've spoken with the owner of edate and he is not corporate and he just wants to offer a totally free dating service that takes on the big boys. It is currently pretty new so he is transferrring thousands of users over from another site!
  • I find the sides first-class. Greetings from Schwarzenbek
  • What i´ve learned on highschool is that design is not about beauty, it´s about function. If "ugly design" (in the sense of the lack of beautiness) works, it _is_ good design. Good "designers" know that!
  • Interesting discussion ... for me, it also depends on the subject/business of the site. Sometimes the content demands ugly design (=simple design?)
  • Hi I also like asians, visit my blog at

    http://allasianpass.spaces.msn.com/
  • So, true. I left working for this company because they wanted me to "design" a website to be perfectly porportionate. When they wanted me to redo the website for the 4th time because of a problem of being proportionate. I said effin* make the damn website your self!
  • on june,31 2006 i make 1097.05$ from google adsense. This is only 5
    days only, you can see a little TIPS from this site
    http://www.netdesignmedia.com/acne/index.php


    - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - -
    Ten Days Make 1000 Dollar
  • Love is Free. Why pay? Meet thousands of local singles. Never pay a cent. Instant access.
  • I am not sure that the issue is "ugly" versus "pretty" design, but maybe just simple and uncluttered versus overdone. I can imagine some awfully ugly designs that would be so busy they would likely not make much money. It would seem to me that one would be best served by a design that was simple, fast loading, and in some way distinctive. As for the site mentioned pulling in major bucks, I think that is has a lot more to do with servicing the most primary drive in humans, apart from eating and drinking ;-)
  • TD
    The Numeral not real for such site.... Real numeral well can 1000 well not as not 10000 . though tastesdiffer.com speaks that interrupt record of the home site
  • Bob
    Is it my imagination but has the PlentyofFish website had a design change to make it more pretty since this article?
  • Buon luogo, congratulazioni, il mio amico!
  • you're mixing things up that are not necessarily related. design is good, if it serves its purpose well (and even better if it does not defy other purposes the designer might not even have thought about). “be beautiful” – which BTW is what the intended audience/the users perceive as beautiful or desirable esthetic qualities – is just one of several possible imperatives there. acknowledged: there is a certain share of designers out there who work more in a way like hairdressers or confectioners in a fancy, expressive would-be-artist way. your perception about design might have become a little bit distorted by those. and even them i.e. the better ones amongst them still do good design in areas where it is important to exactly do something their way. and then there are those specialists for a certain kind of hyperclean anal-retentative “professional-looking” corporate design which might visually please their clients – but not serve the purposes of their actual audience. and sadly quite often share certain visual preferences with those.

    IMNSHO myspace works so well because it extremely lowers the entry barrier for anybody without visual skills, i.e. the largest share of people. it does not make users ashamed of their lack of skill.

    google OTOH is absolutely clever designed. people still believe that it was simple. if you just take a look at the search engine this may still hold true, but the large and _complex_ majority of google's services is hidden behind this facade of simplicity. perfect marketing, i would say.

    and OTTH the dating site works well, because… well, it is a free dating site. it serves a need that has and propably will always be profitable to serve. heck, it might even work better and be even more succesful with a better interface, but neither can i prove this nor you can prove the contrary.

    BTW, agencies and marketing departments of certain companies have been using non-corporate looking design very purposefully for quite some time now, especially where popular youth culture is concerned. and that's also one point why, to me, anybody using the word “authentic” in public without turning beet red deserves a severe flogging for either being ill-spirited or for excessive naivity and extreme lack of insight. marketing already knows quite well, where it should not dress up like standard industry marketing to be perceived well.

    maybe you should think again. there *are* some points in the original post, but in the end the conclusions drawn from them turn out as nothing but hot air.
  • Paid dating sites do have an advantage over free dating sites because they can limit the amount of spammers. People on paid services need to use a credit card which, for the most part, assures that they are a real person that can be tracked back for spamming. Also, social networking sites like myspace are taking over but there are too many people to weed through. Also, they are flooded with spam too.

    I recommend signing up on all dating sites and social networking sites if you are serious about meeting the right person. You might find a great date online, at a singles bar, or just walking down the street. However, the more that you, and or, your pictures are exposed to other singles the better chance you will have to find love, friendship, intimacy, a one night stand or whatever you are looking for.

    Also, just think, if you find someone you like on a paid site is $20.00 to much money. Yes, it's great to have the internet free but most free dating sites are full of ads, spam, players. Again, I would suggest using the free services too but just be prepared to figure out who is and is not trying to spam you.
  • Common guys. I saw a lot of comments - bursting with envy.

    900K CAD is about 800K USD. 400K per month (exclude tax fee). But do not forget that Markus should pay for HUGE outgoing traffic. 100K cash isn’t too much but very good for one person

    He made nobody elso couldn’t dream about.

    This is an example how an ordinary dating website can make so much money

    So we have a chance too?
  • Good to hear such a thing.

    Then my site is doomed for success, eh?

    It is just disheartening to be abused to develop and market a beautiful website, which loads in 20 seconds, is barely crawlable and with no navigation.

    Our own projects we (SEOs) go for.

    To the previous comment.
    I'd say Markus deserves what he gets. He has put hours, weeks, months and years into what he has created. So, why not?

    If someone is jealous about Markus, I'd rather not imagine how they feel about Bill Gates.
  • Don
    Below is a letter I have been trying to get to Plentyoffish management. It has been a great site up until now. Obviously Mr. Frind has a few issues he needs to work out. I KNOW I have done nothing wrong, yet he has blocked me from his site probably at the behest of a "female" user that wanted to cause problems for me (as explained in the letter below that it seems he will never see)
    Thanks,
    Don
    Mr. Frind,
    It appears that you have blocked my access to your website. While you certainly have that right, I would like to ask you why. You are not obligated to discuss this with me but I would like to say that if you check your records you will find that I have used your site for quite some time and have never had a problem. There have been some disagreements with some of the other members from time to time, but as far as I know I have never done anything to warrant this.
    I do suspect however that a female I blocked because she continued to solicit me to solve electrical problems for her is the cause of this. I have no idea what she may have said, but if you checked your records and found that I was in violation of your agreement, I would appreciate you letting me know what it was. I have tried to contact you after you have blocked my access when I try to re-establish a profile but you do not respond.
    The only other incident was one female who was not expecting one of my photos to be shirtless, however I do not view that as a violation since I see women in skimpy clothing all the time and I saw nothing in your agreement that stated that a man without a shirt on was in violation. Furthermore, in this last instance, this particular lady continued to talk with me via instant messaging and had no issue with the photo after we talked. However, I doubt it was her but who knows? People do strange things.
    So, I have no idea why you are blocking me. Would you care to explain or at least let me know what is going on?
    Don
  • Don
    Mr. Frind,
    I forgot to tell you that you can contact me anytime at x2751@hotmail.com
    Don
  • Max
    How is his site not corporate? He is making money, the site doesn't look bad and he is not doing it for free. Maddox wasn't "corporate" until he had a book deal.
  • I only just found this. It's a good and valid point. Design by committee, and especially by marketing biased committee always yelds muddy results no matter what area of design you work in. I think it's a shame the focus has shifted some what to the subject of 'pretty' vs 'ugly'. A hardcore Graphic Design enthusiast knows that making something 'pretty' or 'cool' or whatever is no where near enough of a brief. There are many, many angles to cover that don't come close to this.
    —
    What I personally feel is lacking in a lot of the design you see on these big sites is input from traditionally educated Graphic Designers. All too often design decisions are made by 'Photoshop Monkeys' calling themselves Graphic Designers.
  • Trouble with much design is that it splits attention. (Just like Powerpoint.)

    People enjoy sites that (a) offer content that they, personally, can use, learn something deeply desired from (and me a writer), grow, etc. In other words: expansive content. Design that serves that end, adds; design that merely embellishes, detracts.

    Content-heavy "ugly" sites that work: Jerry Pournelle's Chaoes Manor, Joe Henderson's Running Commentary, Digg, Fark, Arts & Letters Daily, Bloglines, Cool Tools, Desktoplinux.com, etc.
  • Hey, George I kind of agree with you. Good, 'sucessful' design does not ever merely embellish. I think this is an idea that has come out of a lot of 'Web Designers' not having a good, solid Graphic Design background.
    —
    Almost a decade ago when we had the first 'Dot Com' boom, designers that knew Photoshop and maybe Flash were in massive demand. I think a lot of people fell into these jobs because they knew how to use these programs, not because they were design experts. So many developers ended up having to work with these 'designers' who only knew how to embellish and not how to add real value to a project. This seems to have sadly become the norm for a lot of these 'ugly' sites, many of whom, I imagine, are constantly doing their utmost to be rid of these 'photoshop/flash monkeys'.
  • What about vois.com is it the new plentyoffish?
  • Great post. Great read. All so so true.
  • Bland looking text ads don't blend well with 2.0 designs..... why bother with a nice design if it costs bandwidth, cpu, and ad revenue? Go with what works.
  • This all lies under the argument of design versus efficiency, Sure if we built every building exactly the same in the same shape with the same color, it would be cheaper and faster and of course, more efficient, but who can argue that it would not suck? And why would it suck, because we are not all machines we have things called feelings and emotions. Would you rather have a cheaper crappier looking house?, or a more expansive time invested unique eye pleasing emotional design.
  • Jason
    Plenty of fish website is the worst moderated site on the net. Bunch of fucking assholes running it. Marcus should clean house!
  • I have always wondered about this. I often see sites that are just plain ugly but get a lot of hits. I guess functionality comes before beauty. I would still go for a combination though. I just have to.
  • Myspace is popular because any moron can use it and feel accomplished.

    This is complete crap. It is the content and usefulness that pulls the users in. Having a great design is not going to deter users.
  • my site is also a dating site which i'm growing by my self, the traffic is growing steadily

    I'm concidering anti-marketing version as a secondary version for my site

    my question is if there is a benefit of creating a simple version of the site along side of the regular design would be equally effective
  • dtstyle
    Hmm.

    Realy strange. You are right, but what could be the problem. I mean I really prefer beautiful design, but at the same time functional. Because really there are some designs with bad functionality and there are others with good functionality and bad design.

    May be people really prefer information than fancy stuff.

    Cheers!
    http://www.goaddsite.com/
  • lex G
    One of the few people I agree with is Larry ... (search for him somewhere in this list .. ;) ) ..

    Scobleizer, I've read this post today and it has been bothering me that you're hyping this 'anti-marketing, ugly design' concept. I think your being too 1-sided in this. It's just not so ...

    I've worked in many corporate projects where design has really been a key player in the success of a project. Also, I've worked with MANY people (designers AND marketing experts) who wanted to develop something beautiful because they were passionate about the projects that they were involved in...

    The reason for the success of plentyofffish doesn't have to do with 'how ugly the design is'... the design is functional, but if it were to be just as functional and great looking, would it be succeeding less ? I don't think so ... it's kind of 1-sided to attribute this everything good about plenty off fish to 'an ugly web design' ....


    Mind you ... I am not trying to attack your opinion here but I need to speak out on behalf of all people (including myself) that have dedicated years of study and have worked very hard to bring everyone beautiful looking designs.... Just imagine that everything would be ugly looking ;) wouldn't you then just want to have the best 'ugly looking design ?' ... Sorry ... I really and I mean REALLY have to disagree with you here...

    - Lex G
  • i would say the popularity of the site has nothing to do with design or antimarketing..
    he was just lucky what else could be said...
  • The reason for the success of plentyofffish doesn’t have to do with ‘how ugly the design is’… the design is functional, but if it were to be just as functional and great looking, would it be succeeding less ? I don’t think so … it’s kind of 1-sided to attribute this everything good about plenty off fish to ‘an ugly web design’ ….
  • Wow, thanks for the excellent information!
  • Yak
    Hey Scoble, it would be nice to know if you changed your opinion on this one since you changed your design...
  • Myspace is popular because any moron can use it and feel accomplished.

    This is complete crap. It is the content and usefulness that pulls the users in. Having a great design is not going to deter users.
  • The design isn't rel event and hurts the site if anything. I heard about it from a friend that it looked bad but its free.

    Its just popular same with craigslist

    google works better the any search.

    get real people
  • yes, simple design is too great for sites because its open time is too few and its better for sites....some of the other sites have too simple but they are popular like that plentyoffish sites.
blog comments powered by Disqus