infobong.com the absurd courts the vulgar

Maybe this Robert Scoble post titled “the Role of Anti-Marketing Design” explains why so many people can tolerate the profound ugliness of MySpace. He thinks that sites that are too slick alienate users. Unlike Scoble, 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.

However, 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.