A recent post on Scoble’s blog got my attention. Want to know the secret of Google, Craig’s list, MySpace and Marktplaats? Ugly Design.
Anti-marketing design as Scoble calls it.
Let’s take a look at a few ugly-but-succesful sites. Marktplaats.nl is a Dutch e-bay like site. It’s so freaking ugly, I even bothered to call them a couple of years ago to tell them that they really should do something about their design. Their response: ‘we really like our design, thank you’. A year later e-bay bought Marktplaats for € 225 million.
del.icio.us isn’t the prettiest babe out there as well. For me del.iciuo.us stands out as: ‘hey, this site really handy, but it really could have looked better’. Yahoo bought del.icio.us for a rumored $ 40 million.
I won’t even mention how much MySpace was bought for.
