I was checking out CSSMania and came across the site for a new product called Switchboard. This product is a kind of hybrid blog/forum and it actually sounds kind of interesting. Plus it's hosted and it's free, which removes the barrier of entry for a lot of people. (We'll see if they can make a business out of it.)

But aside from all that, one thing bothered me about the product. The design of both the website and the app were highly inspired by someone else's work. Actually, no point in tip-toeing, it's basically a ripoff.

Check out the Switchboard website, then check out the Campaign Monitor website. Hmmm... Now check out the Switchboard Application, then check out Digg. Yea, not exactly originality in action. Switchboard seems to take a little too much from these other sites and it's fairly blatant.

Now I know there is only so many ways to layout a webpage, and I myself have been inspired by other sites (say for example the tabbed navigation in billQ which can be seen on about 1,000,000 other sites), but something this obvious which was done not for functionality, but for style, is just lazy.

I'm sure Digg, silverorange (who designed Digg), and Campaign Monitor wouldn't appreciate such a theft of their intellectual property. And aside from that, it looks sloppy, lazy, and just plain bad. I for one was completely turned off after seeing the evidence, which is a shame because the product does have some potential. But I am definitely not going to support a company with these ethics.

Switchboard needs to define its own brand and its own identity instead stealing designs. How else do they expect to grow a community if the face of their company is the same as someone else's? It's not beneficial to cut corners on design, or even worse, ripoff a design. People can tell. Stop being lazy. Your company should stand for something, and a users first impression of what you stand for should not be the lack of originality.