I don't think this is a good idea. As a somewhat loose comparison I wouldn't make a newyrktimes.com with an alternative layout either. There must be endless other ways of spending one's spare time, e.g. by making something you can charge for. I know this sounds harsh and I don't mean to rip on the author personally, but in general I think there are too many derivative-of-derivative services out there.
I think it is a great exercise to reimagine your favorite websites. Build junk. Because it is fun. Because it teaches you. Because no one expects it to be awesome so you can be free to play.
You have to sharpen the saw somehow and by taking an existing site you can focus entirely on the interface and not on requirements capturing or brand establishment since those have been provided for you.
It makes us designers stronger. One of the first things I tell people trying to better their design is just that… redo your favourite website. Learn the techniques they used, find out what they did what they did and then mess it up and make it better.
Thanks for the input. I'm working on my startup as well, so don't be too worried about how I'm spending my spare time.
In fact, in one way, I made this so I could spend more time on my startup. I found myself wasting too much time reading Hacker News. Either I was procrastinating and refreshing too often, where I found it hard to either identify what story was new that I hadn't seen, or which ones I'd already seen but did not interest me. Or, I was going back and reading simply so I wouldn't miss anything, since stories tend to trail off pretty quickly unless they get a lot of votes.
