ipicit’s Terrible Landing Page
Michael Arrington
53 comments »
We see a lot of landing pages for startups not yet ready to launch, but today I saw what may be the worst one yet. The loud sound effects that start without warning combined with the yellow background alarmed me and sent my blood pressure up. Then I see that the company describes itself using 20 or so tags (see image below), but nothing else to put these in context. Descriptive words include “photos, friends, favorites, writing, notes, music, business, gifting, blog, video, to do, news, rate, bulletin board, calendar, art, movies, and video.” Oh, and “money”
This means everything and nothing, of course. Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen bad landing pages before. But they are usually bad in a “the engineers slapped this up in 5 minutes so that we could have a place for people to give us their email address” kind of way. I actually kind of like it when startups cut corners on design early on because they have no money are are focused on the back end. But ipicit’s landing page is bad in another kind of way - it looks like it involved designers. And quite probably consultants. I bet they spent a lot of time picking out those tags.
A final note - the site also has a little spam tool where you can enter in the emails of your friends and they’ll be notified when ipicit launches. It’s not a good idea to begin your relationship with a potential user via an unsolicited email message.
Now it turns out I’m not completely in the dark on what ipicit will be, because the person who tipped me off on them says they are “planning to take MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube users with their all in one interface.” So it sounds like a new social network. Knowing that, the tags make more sense. Why not just add a sentence saying something along those lines? It’s not like your competition (MySpace, YouTube and FaceBook) are going to be paying much attention, and people will have a better idea of what they are signing up for.
Of course I’m intruiged, as always. I’m a sucker for any landing page, even a terrible one. It’s launching on January 1, so we’ll know soon enough what all these tags are supposed to mean.
Update: Someone in the comments pointed out that Zombo is pretty bad, too. I agree, although I would like to hope that it isn’t actually a landing page for a new service? Let me know about any other atrocities that we’ve missed.
Of course this is highly subjective -
but that landing page is an unforgetable, brilliant marketing idea. You will not forget it, and you will not click away. you are in suspense.
That was probably their motive - and they succeeded well, even to the point of getting viral marketing, controversy (and probably a Digg Front page)
Is this a joke??
A decent reliable source (TC) promoting a complete (1999) wannabe startup that has a stupid flash page promising what????
To be everything online???
Their landing page (who uses that term or even thinks it works) seems to be the next BIG nothing.
Seriously, is this a joke?? Is it April 1st??
“You will not click away, You are in suspense, A brilliant maketing idea”
C,mon, this is a joke right?
I think our landing page is much MUCH worst, Mike
Actually, now I think about it you’re probably right….it will get a Digg front page……..when you consider how ‘gamed’ Digg is.
Jeff
Actually, send to a friend is a commonly used viral marketing tool.
Such sites as amazon.com (tell a friend) and YouTube (share video) among thousands of other Web sites have send to a friend. On the other hand, asking you to sign up 10 of your friends at one shot, such as ipicit does, is a bit much.
I usually try our many new services and I sign up to get notified when they launch. This landing page made me not want to be back there, ever, for any reason. Giving my e-mail address? Yeah right.
What if this horrible design is just the tip of the iceberg of what’s coming?
Some competition for http://www.zombo.com/ I think.
http://bla.st/web-2.0/
Mirko, no worries. I gave them your email address anyway.
RBA - you joke, but I didn’t write about you because of that logo. It suggests that the underlying service won’t be any good. Let’s talk.
“brilliant marketing idea” - haha! You having a laugh?
I don’t remember the name, I don’t remember the URL. All I remember is the cheesy 1999/2000 flash and sound effects. HORRID - I didn’t wait for the tags to appear and I doubt i’ll ever be visiting that unforgettable (illicit?? I can’t remember) url ever again!!
OMG - so funny. You can totally tell a whole room full of people with Marketing degrees, who have no idea what a tag cloud is or what its function is, got together and B.S.’ed for three hours…
…with that landing page being the result.
I think we need a “Darwin Award” framework for start-ups.
No idea of what it’s about. But I hope someday my site could have tens of thousands of clicks before I launch it, or even anybody else knows what I’m going to do with it.
Tech Tutorials: http://www.hotcoding.com
I think the landing page is ‘not that bad’. Considering that we all have our opinions on how it should look like, I guess their attempt was to break away from the cliche.
I just wish that their service (when they launch) is better than how people have perceived their initial page.
I know we think we are all geniuses and have all the answers (some of us) but guys I am new to Web 2.0 and from what I have seen and read I would not pass judgement until the stupidity unfolds. Next thing we know these guys are selling out to Google for $2 Billion.
In fact this is my concern about blogs…our “innocent” postings could swing things in either direction….
@Michael - I knew I could count on you
I just really, really, really hate landing pages with music or sound effects - if I’m in the wrong environment when I hit them (ie., at work) I always navigate away immediately and rarely go back.
WELCOME to zombo.com…. the impossible is possible @ zombo.com… are you kidding? that site has been around for ages! it’s not a landing page
Zombocom is one of my favorites from 2001. Good to know it is still relevant.
“I actually kind of like it when startups cut corners on design early on because they have no money are are focused on the back end.” - ha, that’s the approach we took with ours. Half our development this year was stuff nobody’d be able to see except us. Since I sometimes get a hard time for that from people….
I am not easily excited by another social networking site start up but never say never.
lol good old zombo — a droll joke; shows up periodically on lists like
usatoday’s oddest webpages! This one is like gruvr and others with very
little intro text…
Get some older folks to proofread your reviews
If you pull your lips apart with 2 fingers, their name is like the phrase “i was born on a pirate ship” .
On a serious note - Michael with all such social network(ing) sites coming up / VC throwing money / Acquisitions for gazillion $’s, how long do you think before we have another bubble burst?
Zombo.com is one of the best laughs that I’ve had in a while! I’m still not sure what it is, but it got my attention. I guess they accomplished their goal…..
Another good example is VojoSalsa.com
I don’t like Zomob.com, and this one is ok…at lease, Michale wrote an article for them, whatever, they got what they want.
Tell 10 friends…. that is too much, people usually keep the email address in their address book instead of their mind.
Everyone has own way to judge something is good or bad, all of us may be the 80% thought the landing page is bad, how about rest of 20%…
Unfortunately, you can’t judge a book by its cover. Case in point, I hope The Venice Project looks nothing like their home page. This site just might have a lot of potential.
I remember a time when “mustard” was considered hip during my art school days. Everyone was using it. But thats not what bothers me about this new company…….
This site promises to be everything to everyone all at the same time. My red flag went up when at the very end of the animation they tossed in the word “money” in the right hand side for about 1.3 seconds.
In all fairness though setting up a launch page like this does generate a sizeable opt in email list.
At the very least they managed to capture your attention from a different perspective, and get a decent amount of traffic from techcrunch for their landing.
How about sharing some with us
Payscroll.com- Private Alpha coming soon early 2007
SLOW NEWS DAY MIKE?
I love it…when “experts” don’t remember recent history (or do their homework) you know there’s a big problem in the industry. (I’m talking about the Zombo reference.) That’s why similar mistakes to the ones made 5 years ago are being made again now.
Uh, Zombo.com is and has always been a joke page.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombo.com
Seriously…. zombocom is brilliant and been around forever.
Incidentally…..who exactly picked it?
Not too bad - I’ve seen worse.
And I like Zombo’s too - its cheesy-good. Hahah!
OMG…ZOMBO is much WORSE! MUCH MUCH MUCH. Ok that’s it.
I like http://www.sionicmedia.com
File this under “who gives a ****”
What happened to the TechCrunch in the good ole days? We want to hear about real startups that have real potential, not some lame start pages or Google or Yahoo or Facebook. Where’s Natali when you need her? At least she dugg up some interesting stories…
I saw an article within the last several months talking about how horrible layouts sometimes are a better attraction feature than good ones. By using a bad layout one can create intrigue (as ipicit obviously did) as well as focus. For some reason, reading something that has a poor layout can be intriguing. I don’t that it actually doesn’t tell us what it is - it does say that it is an “inNet” and all about us.
Zombocom is the best, you fools.
Man.. that sound really scared me!
Volume offcouse at max - and thinked, well it can’t be that bad..
Man i got a shock - just ripped the earphones off!
Has anyone noticed that the standard English pronounciation of ipicit would be “I piss it”?
That strikes me as a poor choice of names.
ANOTHER Myspace/Facebook/YouTube ? Yawn..the problem is unless most someones friends/buddies moves to another social network, chances are they won’t. And if everyone is waiting for the everyone to move, noone will ever go. We’ll see how it is when it launches, but whats with the name?!?
Mike, I seriously hope you’re being sarcastic about Zombo.com. If not, how appropriate that such a well-known internet meme can fool you of all people: yet another indication that this overly-hyped “Web 2.0″ bullshit has reached critical mass.
If you want to offer opinions, find a beat, stick with it, and offer better analysis - like Om. Don’t keep this “strategy” of criticizing designs or features of certain companies that you don’t think are cool - that makes you a troll, and adds you to the long list of participants in the circle jerk that is the blog community.
This is news? An upcoming company has what one considers to be a lame start page? Proof is in the pudding and if it’s a social network aggregator…well, i agree, yawn. Bash them if they have a bad service when they come out.
Until then, who are we to say what a good landing page is? If google did something like this we’d be all spreading rumoros about what they were doing and call it so innovative. Just wait and find out. If it’s good, let us know. Until then, we really dont’t care about crap landing pages.
Is there a landing page competition around?
What a f___ing annoying homepage! Who wants to listen to crappy sounds.
blah blah blah…I have no idea what icipit does or will do, instead all these animations why not to put simple, clear message…as about Zombo, well if I would to review it right now I would describe it as something like ‘100 different ways to pronounce welcome’.
That Zombo.com landing page was really really back in a hilarious kinda way. Man. I hope it was joke. Its like some in Banglore wants to launch a site with a Grameen Bank financed marketing budget. LMFAO
Did any of you turn it off before watching it? … and are you talking about it?
Guess what, IT WORKED!! - lmao
Seems the best rated, best designed and defined marketing campaigns fail. Which proves that a simple intrest building, controversial piece like what ipicit has done can make it to the forefront. I bet between the genre between “digg.com” and “robot chicken” they will be appearing in guest spots before long.
For now it’s about waiting for the launch to see what they can really do.
Want a page with tags? What about 1000wordpage.com?
Interesting, they have changed thier landing page to one that is simple and direct with great graphics and an awesome interest building tagline that seems to be targeted directly at you Michael.
Michael, at this point I think you should rename your article “The Dumbest Company of 2006″.
I was a supporter of this site up until today. Contradicting you, I felt the first landing page did it’s job. The second landing page really got me though. It felt as if a company listened, paid a larger/better agency to help them and was moving in the right direction. Bravo!
However, today my hopes were dashed by a very stupid move. It seems, as usually, that a president, ceo, marketing director, executive or a combination of these, fired the second newer agency. Why do I say this? Becuse the original landing page is back. What were they thinking?
This move has made me loose my interest and makes me feel as if this company has no respect for the design industry. If you pay a professional agency then you should listen to what they say! Thanks guys, you turned me from a supporter to a critic.
Last post - over and out!