I don't think this is very coherent. It's basically the author's impression of what works and what doesn't. It isn't really substantiated.
A few examples:
he complains about snipd (first example) having too many colors on the frontpage, yet praises Basecamp (last example) even though they have even more colors on their front page.
Comparing Snipd's service to Google, and saying that Google does a better job of conveying information because they have less of it on their frontpage is a bit too easy. Snipd's service is substantially more complicated and unknown than Googles (seen from a user perspective, of course)
It's not a bad post by any means, it should just stress that these are opinions of the author, and not necessarily what has been proven to work.
Absolutely! I jotted this up in an hour, thought people here might like it, and submitted it. Consider this to be the rambling opinion of a guy who likes looking at web sites.
he complains about snipd (first example) having too many colors on the frontpage, yet praises Basecamp (last example) even though they have even more colors on their front page.
The problem with Snipd isn't the colors. It's the fact that the colors don't contast well. There's faded-green next to vivid-green, cream with orange, and a lot of colors that don't fit well together. (I think when it was first posted here I said it reminded me of a liver spot, and the blue at the bottom felt like athlete's foot.) The Basecamp one, meanwhile, really pops. You get that really comforting dark-on white, there's lots of padding, and it all feels very cozy. (I particularly like that they contrast the red of the Basecamp page with the green of the sign-up button on top.) It's not perfect, but I thought nitpicking would detract from the message.
Comparing Snipd's service to Google, and saying that Google does a better job of conveying information because they have less of it on their frontpage is a bit too easy. Snipd's service is substantially more complicated and unknown than Googles (seen from a user perspective, of course)
That's worth a completely different write-up: it's a big problem if people don't know why they should use your product. I don't get the point of clipping sites, so I don't know what design would work well for one. On the other hand, there are a lot of search sites, and Google was the one that figured out exactly what they were supposed to do.
I was thinking about using Zooomr rather than Snipd, but Zooomr is so incredibly awful that I didn't want to use it in an article like this. Zooomr I can't help but laugh at. Snipd actually works very well: they just have an ugly front page.
Glad you replied - I wasn't quite sure about submitting the comment, since it might sound like a grumpy old man telling the kids to get off his lawn. I see you don't take it that way :-)
And for something jotted up in an hour it's pretty spectacular :-)
I agree that Snipd's colors seem misplaced - the Basecamp site is vibrant and colorful, and colors are used well.
Snipd's homepage on the other hand is fairly bland, and where colors do deviate from the theme they are hardly justified. One particular sore spot is the atrocious green "no avatar" placeholder, which clashes terribly with the rest of the page.
If you are a user-content-sharing site IMHO you need to be more colorful than drab - you're trying to convey excitement and fun, not uptight and business-like.
A few examples:
he complains about snipd (first example) having too many colors on the frontpage, yet praises Basecamp (last example) even though they have even more colors on their front page.
Comparing Snipd's service to Google, and saying that Google does a better job of conveying information because they have less of it on their frontpage is a bit too easy. Snipd's service is substantially more complicated and unknown than Googles (seen from a user perspective, of course)
It's not a bad post by any means, it should just stress that these are opinions of the author, and not necessarily what has been proven to work.