About.com Creates Its Own Hot Or Not Site
from the getting-desperate dept
If you've been surfing the web at all over the last few months you've probably seen (and either dismissed outright or become addicted to) the AmIHotOrNot phenomenon. There have been, of course, a ton of copycat sites - some more creative than others. Now comes the news that a major online company, About.com, has created their own version which they're using to help generate additional traffic and sell banner ads. The site is a blatant rip off of AmIHotOrNot and doesn't clearly admit its association with About.com. Also, in just looking over the site, I went through the first five pictures that came up, and I'd say they are significantly higher quality then the standard pics on AmIHotOrNot, so I wonder if About.com is being a bit more... selective.
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Ah, the irony
"ton of copycat sites"
"blatant ripoff"
Kind of ironic language on a slashdot clone, doncha think?
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Re: Ah, the irony
Anyway, no I don't think it's ironic language, and I don't think we're a "Slashdot clone". If you do, why are you reading Techdirt? We cover mostly different stories with a different focus and a different tone.
Sure, we all like Slashdot and use the code, and used it as inspiration for putting this site together the way it is... but the original idea for this site as a discussion place for ideas related to the technology business world came about long before any of us had seen Slashdot. It was only when we became aware of what the Slash code allowed that we thought it would be cool to migrate Techdirt over to the same basic user experience.
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