I think the real trick, is it shouldent be forced.
If you feel inpired by somthing, it should change somthing inside you and motivate somthing in you
and become a smart part of you but with your covering on top

Theres nothing wrong with becoming inpired and immitating others, aslong as you value
it, respect it 100% truley to take it into somthing of your own and not just repeat what there doing

I hope the new job’s working out well for you.

From a branding perspective it’s not who does it first, it’s who does it first and people buy into it. And then who has momentum.

Then there is the blatant rip off (some own brand ‘i can’t believe this isn’t I can’t believe it’s not butter’ where it’s about conning people into buying an imposter.

The virtual world is lightly different when people are always looking for the next big thing. Facebook got taken over by Bebo, then Myspace, then Facebook and now twitter. The internet is littered with IT has-beens partly because they have been taken over by large corporations who don’t know what to do with them. They become covered in advertising and loose their edge.

That’s why Davids blog is so good. He involves people in it, you feel as if it’s not just Davids blog. It’s also ours.

Keep up the good work David.

while I mostly agree, I think there are some exceptions. Take Aaron Wall’s post 101 effective link building strategies for example, it’s THE most linked too link-builing post despite there being famous posts in the same vein previously

Kirin, Lakshmi
Yes, David’s site came first… in fact David was the reason I originally got into blogging as I mention in a number of interviews online. It was through David that I first got to know about Wordpress & Social Media so I have a lot to owe him for that. (David, guess I owe you a Guinness… or a few).

The thing that makes David’s blog unique is that he shares the improvements he does to his blog – for example the TwitterTip plugin just last post – a great addition that gives back to the whole Twitter community. It is the same for any other blog, if you notice a feature or function that works nicely then of course you want to include it somehow into your own site.

Thanks for the great community discussion again David, comes as a timely topic for me too as my work has been copied yet again.

I also just chalk it up to the fact I came into design from a hardcore research science. I see replication as a good thing because in research we need to replicate in order to rule out type 1/2 errors in earlier research. It also means the research was interesting enough to get someone to replicate it… or it ticked someone off and they want to prove you wrong :).

Andy:

I see it in shoes too. One spring/summer we had a shoe by Guess that was a patent leather ballet slipper with these fake jewels on it. They did their run on our sales floor and just after we sell the last of them on clearance, another brand ships us ones virtually identical to it. Ironically it looks like Guess is even starting to copy Coach’s signature “C” pattern with their own G which is why I think we are starting to get more graffiti patterns from Coach.

It’s about the very real fact that when David puts something in place (even small tweaks), they are immediately copied. Time and time again.

And if you haven’t noticed, just watch the next time David makes a change here…

If I find it tedious, I can only imagine what David thinks as he’s been on the receiving end all this time. David, you have the patience of a saint!

I am sure a lot of us can testify to the fact we work hard in (insert name of web design software here) to get a CSS layout to work in one browser, test it in another to find out it does not work. Then, when you fix it in the second browser you re-test in the first and find you broke that one. In the end we all arrive at what works and, thanks to standardization, it generally is the same thing.

It kind of reminds me of an episode of Barefoot Contessa where Ina Garten makes her “Company Potroast”. In it she explains that pot roast is not something you normally serve to company because it is more of a company food. But she jazzes up the recipe to make something that is good enough to serve to dinner guests. And while it looks (and people say tastes) absolutely delicious, it still is a pot roast underneath. It is what she did with the potroast that makes it uniquely hers. So while this 3-column white-on-black each site is a common structure, each person seasons it with their widgets, content, etc.

My own site will most likely have the same 3 column structure as I like that for organizing blogs and I will most likely have black text on a white background too for legibility issues depending on what I can find in research. For example Both David and Jacob put their “About” and other such links as well as pictures of themselves at the top of their left sidebars. Do a search for eye maps on web browsing and you can see that this is the spot on the sidebar where people’s eyes spend the most time directly so the “About” and “Portfolio” links are probably best put there.

And yes, you may have similar content posts on the same topic but that happens in many blogospheres. I mean how boring would it be if we read political, tech, or some other genre of blogs where only one blog could offer a specific news story/opinion/review?

Sorry this turned into a novella :).