The role of anti-marketing design
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?
March 4th, 2006 at 1:56 pm
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.
March 4th, 2006 at 2:14 pm
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*!)
March 4th, 2006 at 2:16 pm
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.
March 4th, 2006 at 2:37 pm
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.
March 4th, 2006 at 2:43 pm
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.
March 4th, 2006 at 2:49 pm
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.
March 4th, 2006 at 2:51 pm
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.
March 4th, 2006 at 2:52 pm
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.
March 4th, 2006 at 2:53 pm
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.
March 4th, 2006 at 2:54 pm
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.
March 4th, 2006 at 2:56 pm
“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. ;-)
March 4th, 2006 at 2:57 pm
[...] Scoble talks about plentyoffish.com. What’s the secret to his success? Ugly design. I call it “anti-marketing design.” [...]
March 4th, 2006 at 3:04 pm
Well, they say we have the “visual appeal of a pipe wrench”, intended and taken as a compliment.
Craig
March 4th, 2006 at 3:09 pm
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.
March 4th, 2006 at 3:17 pm
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.
March 4th, 2006 at 3:19 pm
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.
March 4th, 2006 at 3:23 pm
[...] Robert Scoble has a post about using Anti-Marketing Design in order to create a successful website but the argument just doesn’t work for me. [...]
March 4th, 2006 at 3:25 pm
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
March 4th, 2006 at 3:44 pm
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.
March 4th, 2006 at 4:16 pm
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 :) )
March 4th, 2006 at 4:44 pm
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.
March 4th, 2006 at 4:57 pm
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
March 4th, 2006 at 5:23 pm
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.
March 4th, 2006 at 5:27 pm
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.
March 4th, 2006 at 5:37 pm
“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!!
March 4th, 2006 at 5:39 pm
“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”.
March 4th, 2006 at 6:03 pm
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.
March 4th, 2006 at 6:05 pm
But why did Microsoft recruit him or Winer adopt him ?
March 4th, 2006 at 6:13 pm
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.
March 4th, 2006 at 6:15 pm
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.
March 4th, 2006 at 8:23 pm
Bad design (visual, not code) is the new good design?
March 4th, 2006 at 8:35 pm
“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.
March 4th, 2006 at 8:44 pm
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.
March 4th, 2006 at 8:49 pm
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.
March 4th, 2006 at 8:54 pm
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).
March 4th, 2006 at 8:55 pm
Robert,
Do you know what platform he uses for his forums on PlentyofFish? If not can you ask and post about it? Thanks!
March 4th, 2006 at 9:13 pm
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.
March 4th, 2006 at 9:16 pm
“But, you CAN also be both. If that’s what you want me to understand, fine, I get it.”
Uh, congratulations?
March 5th, 2006 at 12:01 am
[...] Sir, ugly design is not the key to your success, your search engine optimization is. People didn’t pick your dating site because it got beaten with the ugly stick, they picked it because it was the first result in their Google search. [...]
March 5th, 2006 at 1:06 am
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… ;-)
March 5th, 2006 at 1:16 am
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!
March 5th, 2006 at 1:29 am
[...] FIRO-B « Matisyahu Video Published 0 minutes ago –> » Just reading this post enrages me. Google isn’t ugly. It’s simple. Craigslist isn’t ugly, it’s content-rich. Purple backgrounds with yellow text on Myspace? That’s ugly. I will agree though, who cares what a blog looks like? You can’t my pretty header in Bloglines. It’s about the content. Don’t judge a book by it’s cover… unless it’s Myspace. Quickly bookmark Ugly Works at [...]
March 5th, 2006 at 1:45 am
“Either something is beautiful and well done, or its slap dash and not. Ugly as a virtue?”
Innocent Bystander, it is all about perceptions…
March 5th, 2006 at 8:01 am
I browsed http://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.
March 5th, 2006 at 8:25 am
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.
March 5th, 2006 at 8:50 am
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.
March 5th, 2006 at 10:31 am
[...] Robert Scoble has a thought provoking post about anti-marketing web design and how it’s often more successful then well-designed sites. [...]
March 5th, 2006 at 10:52 am
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.
March 5th, 2006 at 11:20 am
[...] I have a confession to make. I’m one of those people who fast-forwards adverts. I hate ‘em. This can lead to some very confused conversations with friends (”I laughed my leg off at such-and-such an advert?” “Never seen it…”) but really, I’m quite happy to live in ignorance of whatever it is these adverts are trying to sell me. But now… Now they’re targeting people just like me with the adverts. KFC have an advert you need a Tivo to appreciate (you need to watch the advert really slowly). And I think it’s a marvellous idea. I appreciate that advertisers pay the channels to put on the programs that I watch. I just really hate adverts. I hate any form of interference that’s trying to sell me stuff I don’t want. If I want something, I’ll generally look around and decide rationally which product I’ll buy, rather than the one with the nicest advert or greatest brand awareness in my mind. (I’m such a curmudgeon that “brand awareness” tends to count against them in my mind.) This isn’t just a TV thing either. I hate all forms of attention grabbing “Ha ha! Made you look! Now buy this product” hype that marketroids are so keen on. I dislike getting catalogues in the post. I dislike getting junk mail. I dislike anything that takes my attention away from where I want it to be just because they want to flog me something. If it was something I wanted or needed, they wouldn’t need to advertise it. So if it’s not something I want or need, I’m not going to buy it. It’s that simple. (On the other hand, maybe anti-marketing would work on me…) I was starting to get worried that, with more and more folks like me around, advertisers would stop supporting TV channels. That would lead to (even) worse TV programs, higher subscription fees, or - and I really wouldn’t be happy about this - re-engineering of the TV shows to embed adverts in them. So yeah, KFC, stick with the adverts I can fast forward. Good for you. Anything that means advertisers keep paying TV channels to show adverts I don’t have to watch is a Good Thing. [...]
March 5th, 2006 at 12:15 pm
[...] Robert Scoble lyckas återigen slå huvudet på spiken. Den här gången handlar det om anti-marketing design. I ett samtal med Markus Frind, som har webbplatsen Plentyoffish.com, en kanadensisk datingtjänst, kommer det fram en hel del intressanta saker. [...]
March 5th, 2006 at 2:06 pm
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?
March 5th, 2006 at 2:26 pm
FOF works despite it’s design, not because of it.
Some people do think style matters (see point 4).
March 5th, 2006 at 2:27 pm
erm that should be POF not FOF.
March 5th, 2006 at 2:29 pm
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.
March 5th, 2006 at 3:12 pm
[...] O dono do site canadiano que mais dinheiro faz com os Google Ads (dez mil dlares por dia!) diz que o segredo est num mau design. [...]
March 5th, 2006 at 3:14 pm
You Say Bad Design, I Say Not Overdesigned
Web seer Robert Scoble claims ugly design or anti-marketing design works well for web sites, because people have become suspicious of sites that look too well put together. In a lot of ways, he’s right. Anyone who has been involved in direct marketi…
March 5th, 2006 at 3:56 pm
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…
March 5th, 2006 at 3:57 pm
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!
March 5th, 2006 at 4:54 pm
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.
March 5th, 2006 at 5:12 pm
[...] Robert Scoble wrote about the idea of bad design being better for business here, which got me thinking about the sites I visit frequently: [...]
March 5th, 2006 at 5:15 pm
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.
March 5th, 2006 at 6:16 pm
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!”
March 6th, 2006 at 12:05 am
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 :-)
March 6th, 2006 at 12:46 am
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.
March 6th, 2006 at 2:43 am
[...] Lire le post de Scoble sur l’exemple d’un site au Canada ni plus ni moins bien qu’un autre mais qui génèrent un trafic très important. [...]
March 6th, 2006 at 10:23 am
[...] With Adsense and Adwords, advertising revenue generated on high traffic websites has become automatic. All that needs to be done is log-in, download a javascript, integrate it into webpages, and get up to 10.000$ a day without doing anything, as long as you have important traffic. Read Scoble’s post on the Canadian website, as good as any other, but which generates an important amount of such traffic. [...]
March 6th, 2006 at 11:44 am
[...] You’re a good software developer, but you’re having a hard time creating good design? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. As the founder of Plentyoffish.com discovered, ugly designs may pull more revenue! [...]
March 6th, 2006 at 1:28 pm
“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.
March 6th, 2006 at 1:56 pm
[...] You’ve heard the term ‘less is more’, and it’s a phrase that can definitely ring true in a lot of cases. Apply it to the subject of design and re-name it something like ‘uglier is better’―is it still a valid point? Scoble seems to think so. Read his entry before reading on, if you haven’t already. What’s the secret to his success? Ugly design. I call it “anti-marketing design.” [...]
March 6th, 2006 at 3:49 pm
[...] In a post called “The role of anti-marketing design” Robert Scoble argues that deliberately being ugly has its virtues. His post is worth a read to understand how non-designers often approach design. He also offers up a unique perspective on brands. [...]
March 7th, 2006 at 8:18 am
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.
March 7th, 2006 at 10:48 am
[...] Ugly is good? [...]
March 7th, 2006 at 1:38 pm
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.
March 7th, 2006 at 4:13 pm
[...] Robert Scoble writes that ugly websites such as the one owned by Markus Frind makes more money in what he claims is the anti-marketing design. Actually, the design is much better than many websites I’ve come across. Maybe Robert’s standards are pretty high. Markus’ site which is an online dating site reportedly gets tens of millions of pageviews everyday. That translates to over $10,000 in AdSense revenue each day. [...]
March 7th, 2006 at 5:12 pm
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.
March 7th, 2006 at 10:40 pm
[...] I’ve been meaning to link to and comment on Robert Scoble’s post on The role of anti-marketing design (or how ‘ugly’ designs often do better - especially with AdSense). He refers to ‘plentyofffish.com‘ as an example of one site that is reportedly making some big dollars from AdSense despite it’s fairly humble design. [...]
March 8th, 2006 at 2:30 am
[...] It’s the number that attracted me to read more on one of the moneymakingblogs.com post, then I found Robert Scobe post on one of dating site he said to be ugly. That dating site is owned by Markus Frind. [...]
March 8th, 2006 at 12:17 pm
[...] Yesterday I came across this blog about Markus Friend, the owner of the Plenty Of Fish online dating site. The author of the blog say Markus makes over $10,000 of Plenty Of Fish, which is completely reasonable since Plenty Of Fish is the 3rd biggest online dating site on the net. However, what got me to write this blog post is not that Markus makes $10K a day off Google - it’s because the author fell for Markus’s story that his site got so big because of ugly design or “Anti-marketing” as the author calls it. [...]
March 8th, 2006 at 1:56 pm
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!
March 8th, 2006 at 4:58 pm
[...] Moving on (and switching off the snark for now), Robert Scoble has been talking about the benefits of having an ugly website: 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! [...]
March 8th, 2006 at 5:23 pm
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.
March 8th, 2006 at 8:20 pm
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.
March 8th, 2006 at 10:08 pm
[...] Scobleizer is reporting about a the #1 Adsense user in Canada, Markus Frind, founder of PlentyOfFish.com. Markus’ site is a free dating site and brings in an amazing $10,000 per day in Adsense revenue. What’s even more amazing is that the site is, well, ugly. Nothing fancy here and that’s part of the draw. [...]
March 8th, 2006 at 10:33 pm
Do Ugly Blogs Earn More?
Robert Scoble started a blog post about anti-marketing design site of his friend Markus Frind. He is Google’s #1 AdSense user in Canada, pulling in more han $10,000 per day from Google. His site is certainly not beautifully designed, but receivi…
March 9th, 2006 at 12:37 am
[...] Scobleizer’s post on why ugly web design works made me think. [...]
March 9th, 2006 at 4:28 pm
[...] Marjut linkitti Scobleizer-blogiin, jossa todettiin, että rumat disainit toimivat kauniita paremmin. Onneksi asia ei ole oikeasti näin yksinkertainen. [...]
March 9th, 2006 at 9:43 pm
[...] Blogbeat: This one you can actually see on an earlier post. I’ve been having a bit of a go at Blogbeat lately because I actually want to like them, but I find it hard to love an interface that’s so bloody ugly (it doesn’t work for me.. I don’t care what Scoble says). [...]
March 10th, 2006 at 7:26 am
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…
March 10th, 2006 at 11:03 am
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.
March 10th, 2006 at 4:51 pm
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
March 11th, 2006 at 8:07 am
[...] There was some interesting talk about business models, design, and adsense and how ugly sites seem to do so well. Scoble’s post on anti-marketing design is an interesting follow-up on that topic. [...]
March 12th, 2006 at 12:30 pm
[...] Törmäsin mielenkiintoiseen artikkeliin jonka mukaan huono sivudesign myy paremmin. Tai ainakin AdSense-mainonta toimii paremmin sivuilla joiden ulkoasu saa AD:t kiljumaan kauhusta. Itsekin olen usein käynyt taisteluja AD-tuulimyllyjä vastaan kun jollekin sivutolle on haluttu uutta ilmettä. Artikkelissa mainitaan eräs lempireferensseistäni - Google. [...]
March 13th, 2006 at 1:52 pm
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!
March 13th, 2006 at 1:53 pm
Oh, I run http://www.onlinepersonalswatch.com and have been in the online personals industry since 1998 btw. I worked for Friendster, Friendfinder and Cupid amongst others.
March 13th, 2006 at 2:25 pm
Why not just setup a site around the highest paying keywords?
Top paying keywords
March 13th, 2006 at 9:09 pm
Anti-design
What kind of design makes for a successful website? Professional and polished? Rich media? Web 2.0-ish Playskool colors and simple graphics? Not according to Marcus Frind. Who is Frind? According to Google, he’s one of the top Google Adsense publisher…
March 14th, 2006 at 7:39 am
That would explain why DrudgeReport also is so popular, its the ugliest site I’ve ever seen, yet, busy and well visited.
March 15th, 2006 at 5:09 am
Not only drudge but http://www.andrewshaffer.com has taken off with a similar design as drudge. http://www.menuserve.com has a design for success!
March 15th, 2006 at 5:10 am
that post above should have been http://www.drewsnewsroom.com not the andrewshaffer.com
March 16th, 2006 at 11:52 am
Excellent site. Well done.
March 16th, 2006 at 3:14 pm
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.
March 17th, 2006 at 12:22 am
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
March 17th, 2006 at 12:33 am
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.
March 17th, 2006 at 11:16 am
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.
March 17th, 2006 at 11:32 am
[...] You can read some excellent insight into the design of his site here. [...]
March 17th, 2006 at 10:19 pm
Wow I just finished reading the first part of this, sounds like Marcus is a real genious.
http://www.tnareview.com
March 18th, 2006 at 4:38 am
Awesome, I could only dream about making so much a day :)
March 19th, 2006 at 9:12 pm
I don’t think the site is ugly at all. I think it’s intuitive.
March 20th, 2006 at 5:10 pm
Seems a more recent story that is a ripoff of yours:
http://www.site-reference.com/articles/Website-Development/The-Surprising-Truth-About-Ugly-Websites.html
is gaining a lot of attention (slashdot, digg).
March 20th, 2006 at 5:54 pm
[...] I remember talking at Northern Voice with Markus Frind, founder of Plentyoffish.com. Frind claims he’s making more than $10,000 per day from Google and doing millions of unique visitors a day. Scoble wrote about the same conversation here. Frind and I went to lunch together and I was able to learn more about his business philosophy and what technologies he was using to power his site. All Microsoft, BTW. He was absolutely ecstatic about the performance he’d been able to squeeze out of SQL Servers. The ironic thing is prior to lunch he was asking Scoble how to get in touch with engineers at Microsoft to deal with scaling concerns. Had he met a brick wall? [...]
March 21st, 2006 at 8:51 am
[...] Back in early March, Robert Scoble wrote this post about how ugly sites convert. A few other blogs picked up on it as well, and all was well. [...]
March 21st, 2006 at 2:14 pm
[...] The second link was pointed by the guys from 37signals and it’s about Contrasting Ideas About Web Application Design ; in other words the fact that one can notice two trends of web apps design: one that tries to mimic desktop apps as much as possible, while the other keeps the distinction alive: web pages are web pages, they should be simple and fast, screw the desktop-alikeness. My 2 cents on that? Well… web apps with classic design have proven their point : big successful websites are webpages; sometimes functionality prevails against design. And a new meme keeps spreading, concerning “unbeautiful” design, the hand-made one that says : we only care about people, and we know you are too smart to be fooled by eye candy(read about it here and here). Hell, it may be just me, but I really prefer simplicity, fast loading pages and as few clicks as possible. As for eye candy… it’s great once in a while; who knows, maybe some day I’ll really get used to it ;) [...]
March 22nd, 2006 at 11:07 pm
[...] I first ran into this story a few days ago reading this blog post on “anti-marketing” design. Up against other popular dating sites, PlentyofFish’s design would lead you to believe that Markus would be lucky to be making about $30 a day; in fact, in 2003 he was making $40 a day from Adsense (although this may have been from other sites.) [...]
March 23rd, 2006 at 12:17 am
[...] There’s been a whole lot of talk lately about ‘ugly design’ and the perception that ‘it works’. The often quoted examples are My Space, eBay, Craigs List, and Del.icio.us. As someone who spends too much time thinking about design and trying to apply user centred design principles to the projects I work on, I find this somewhat annoying. [...]
March 23rd, 2006 at 10:02 pm
It sure isn’t his domain name that makes it successful. Plenty Offish?
P-Brain
March 23rd, 2006 at 10:41 pm
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 http://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.
March 27th, 2006 at 7:22 am
Is Ugly the new Black?
Basically, the argument is simple: look at PlentyOfFish.com, MySpace.com, and Craigslist.com and you find examples of how “ugly sites” can succeed while many pretty sites have failed. Therefore, the argument continues, ugly is the new blac…
March 27th, 2006 at 10:10 am
[...] Markus Frind von PlentyOfFish.com, einer kostenlosen und sehr simplen Singleseite mit 10.000 USD/Tag angeblich. Hier sein Interview. PlentyOfFish hat wegen einem Bericht bei Scoble die Runde gemacht und dient nun vielen als bestätigendes Beispiel, daß ziemlich murksig anzuschauende Webseiten bei AdSense besser verdienen sollen als gut designte Seiten. Dazu aber Markus, der das klarstellt, daß man Äpfel mit Birnen vergleicht: Function over form to build an emotional connection with the user. Blend ads into content, No flashing crap, make the site useful. Basically all those things that everyone knows you are supposed to do, but very few people actually do. There is no magic bullet, but you should always test new designs or new text etc to get the result that you want. You will never have the worst design and never the best, but through testing you can always improve. [...]
March 27th, 2006 at 3:26 pm
[...] I think Scoble may have revelead this earlier in the month and called it “anti-marketing design“. Dozens of other bloggers picked up the story — Darren thinks ugly sites convert better but Rustybrick of seroundtable.com brings it down to the huge volume of organic traffic. [...]
March 27th, 2006 at 9:23 pm
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.
March 27th, 2006 at 9:55 pm
This font is too difficult to read, so I didn’t read the rest of the article. So much for your theory?
March 28th, 2006 at 12:08 am
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.
March 28th, 2006 at 12:37 am
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.
March 28th, 2006 at 12:44 am
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.
March 28th, 2006 at 4:25 am
“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?
March 28th, 2006 at 4:41 am
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 http://www.eDate.com will be a huge competitor in the online dating and free online dating industry.
March 28th, 2006 at 8:00 am
Good developer, design n00b? Don’t worry!
<p align="left">You’re a good software developer, but you’re having a hard time creating good design? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. As the founder of Plentyoffish.com discovered, <a href …
March 28th, 2006 at 10:49 am
[...] The Surprising Truth About Ugly Websites Design is a good idea The role of anti-marketing design Ugly Design Getting Too Much Credit Design Appropriateness - When is Ugly Okay? Does succesful ugly design have a downside? Make it Ugly [...]
March 28th, 2006 at 3:57 pm
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.
March 28th, 2006 at 6:39 pm
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.
March 29th, 2006 at 2:42 am
[...] So… I thought I’d make a post about Scoble so I’d get readership . I read this post a while ago, but I was talking about it today, so I thought I’d write about marketing. [...]
March 29th, 2006 at 4:09 am
really interesting story, actually i’ve learned quite some good stuff from it, i’m doing pretty much the same way.
March 29th, 2006 at 5:20 am
[...] Maybe this Robert Scoble post titled “the Role of Anti-Marketing Design” explains why so many people can tolerate the profound ugliness of MySpace. I would argue that Google and Craigslist aren’t ugly, they’re just minimal. MySpace is in a whole different category. It’s weird to think anyone would think MySpace is less corporate when it’s riddled with ads, even if they don’t know that it’s owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. This post at a design blog called Whitespace argues that ugly design gets too much credit. (Both of these links come from Lost Remote.) The author doesn’t really address the issue that most internet users don’t go to Web sites for the design - they go there for the information or the experience. Google and del.icio.us give users the information they’re looking for with minimal effort, while MySpace users presumably visit the site to connect with friends and acquaintances. While it makes for a funky experience, MySpace’s promiscuity in allowing users to embed their own stylesheets, scripts, and media also probably give it an edge over other YASNS like Friendster. If any design facet matters to most users, it’s the information architecture. If they can’t find what they’re looking for they’ll go away, but ugly color composition clearly doesn’t turn away the millions of users on MySpace. [...]
March 29th, 2006 at 7:59 am
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.
March 29th, 2006 at 3:37 pm
[...] Robert Scoble wrote about the idea of bad design being better for business here, which got me thinking about the sites I visit frequently: [...]
March 29th, 2006 at 6:42 pm
Please end this uninformed rubbish. This says it all…
http://www.airbagindustries.com/archives/009000.php