Cameron Olthuis

When I think of building pre-launch hype for products, it’s hard for me to think of a better example than 37Signals. 37Signals has built a huge following of loyal evangelists through their blog, Signal vs. Noise. The large audience gives them the perfect stage to build hype for their products before they launch, an art they’ve seemed to master.

Today they’ve offered us a teaser video of a new calendar they’re adding to Backpack, their most popular product. When you dig a little deeper you can see that just about every product or book they release is seriously hyped before it’s launched.

I’m not saying all the hype is generated by them, it’s not. They announce the products and/or give sneak peaks, which in turn gets the ball rolling. The audience then creates the snowball effect. The guys at 37 aren’t stupid though, they know anytime the announce a new product or feature that it will create buzz. They know exactly how to leverage their loyal customer base through guerrilla marketing techniques.

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Bad design is better, blah blah blah. Markus from Plentyoffish.com is at again, trying to convince us all that bad design is better, or not . He’s added a little twist this time, saying that sometimes it’s better and sometimes it’s not. Bad design is never better my friend.

I can understand the point Markus is trying to make…

Users don’t want to be distracted by useless graphics, colors, features etc.

But wait, no one is saying that useless graphics and features are better, and that’s not what makes for good design. But that doesn’t mean bad design is better. The only reason Plentyoffish makes money is because 1) it’s free, and 2) the rankings. Try charging your customers and see what happens. Your success has nothing to do with the fact that it’s a god-awful design.

Good UI and proper design will win every single time, hands down. Before you start asking if designers are clued in, get a clue yourself!

I’m pretty excited about Postbubble, one of the new projects ACS is rolling out in conjunction with WeBreakStuff.

Postbubble is a blog about web 2.0 with a slightly different twist. Instead of just profiling the new companies we’ll be taking a more indepth look at the actual business models and strategies behind them. For example… Which social networking sites will succeed and why? What will it take for the Ajax homepages to succeed?

The main author of the site will be one of my partners, Aneil Weber. The rest of us will be chipping in from time to time but it won’t be my main focus. It actually works out perfectly because Aneil is in a whole nother league when it comes to writing and picking apart business models. Head on over and check it out.