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Why the shiny thing is everywhere

Why do so many websites have the same shiny thing that users don't want?

Company D saw something shiny on Company C's website, so they launched the same thing.

Company C had the shiny thing because they had seen it on Company B's website, and so they copied it.

Company B had the shiny thing because they had seen it on Company A's site.

Company A did it because someone thought the shiny thing sounded cool.

But no one had ever asked a user.


8 Comments:

Chris Foley — Nov 5, '09 — 11:12 PM

now I want to see the shiny thing!
Great point though.

Louis Beauregard — Nov 6, '09 — 8:11 AM

Golden rule of plagiarism: Make sure what you are plagiarizing is better than what you could do yourself. :-)

reed — Nov 6, '09 — 10:33 AM

You refer to twitter of course, right? :) By now every corner pizza shop has a twitter feed.

jeanine guido — Nov 9, '09 — 3:51 PM

I want to see that shiny thing too...

;-)

Mark Ballard — Nov 9, '09 — 4:44 PM

So true and so simply and powerfully stated. Nice "article."

Ellen King — Nov 9, '09 — 4:46 PM

Drops shadows, rounded corners, soft gradients, reflections, "lick-able" icons

Zespol Weselny — Nov 10, '09 — 10:27 AM

What a strange thoughts. I can not see anything shiny on goodexperience.com :)

Kai — Nov 17, '09 — 4:00 PM

Or "Company B/C/D see and want what Company A have on their site, not knowing it's only there to appease the insert-word-of-choice CEO." So users don't get a look in, and...well, you know the rest.

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