Because more and more, it looks like they are becoming the legacy publishing platform on the web. Twitter and FriendFeed are usurping them as the fresh, current place to speak and be heard. This is tac on FriendFeed . This is tac on Twitter.

Ze Frank -who I’m sure is basking in the comparisons to GW Bush - today declared mulitlateral war in the twitterverse, pitting friends, family and foes against one another for no particular reason.

So far, instead of forming into equally opposing color coded armies, like Ze Frank diretoed, the twitterverse is fragmenting into a plethora of individualized armies such as sepia, plaid, striped, meat, tartan, off-white.

As for I - I will tell my grandchildren that I was yellow in the color wars of 2008.

So I’m an information designer and I’ve read and considered quite a few theories about ‘information foraging’ and ‘usability’. For example. Jared Spool - a great man and thinker - has built a very profitable consulting practice around his theory of Designing for the Scent of Information. And guess what, hello! Computer information design is a big business! We’re talking hundreds of thousands here.

I propose an alternate paradigm : web pages are like faces, and links are blemishes on that face. This is why aesthetes go on and on about “page white space” - pure beauty.

However, a page that has no blemishes invites gazing admiration but not interaction. So if you want users to touch your page (with their creepy white-gloved hand - is that really Mickey Mouse’s chopped of right hand? Morbid!) you need to give them something to pick at.

And what’s more visceral than a pimple? The more red and angry you make a link look, the more likely that someone will want to go and pop that pimple. This is why marketing folks go on on on about removing whitespace. More page interaction.

picking = clicking

No blemishes, no clicks! Make sure to put a whitehead or some other sign that the link is ripe for picking if you really want users to go nuts on your link zits.