June 18, 2007
One, Two, Three, Four, I Declare A Blog War
Yahoo! just released a new entertainment blog/website-thing called omg!. The enthusiastic exclamation-pointed acronymic name—and pink-on-black elements of its colour scheme—should be familiar for anyone who's ever read Toronto-based celebrity/entertainment/queer blog !! omg blog !!. Now, Frank from omg blog is accusing Yahoo of ripping him off.
The argument is not without merit: as Frank says in an entry posted this morning,
!! omg blog !! has been around with its current graphic design since July, 2003. For my newer readers, that was back before Yahoo! even knew what a blog was and when Pink is the New Blog was white and lavender.The name "omg," or the use of an emphatic exclamation point, or a pink-on-black colour scheme used for one element of a site's layout do not, in and of themselves, make for a copycat, but the culmination of those elements on a site that is about pretty much doing the exact same thing that omg blog is (minus some of the gayness) makes the whole thing seem kinda fishy to us.Since then, our readership has grown to the point that it would be impossible for the folks at Yahoo! not to have visited !! omg blog !! at least once (if not daily).
Content-wise, I can't claim the sole right to post photos of Paris Hilton pumping gas (especially in light of my strict no-Hilton-content-ever policy), but I do take special offense at the direct thievery of my blog's name, punctuation, and color scheme.
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What he should do is go on publishing his website as he always has - in fact he should ramp it up and gather as much attention as possible to his site - then some idiot over at Yahoo! will try and sue him and he can stand up in court and say, look, I've been doing this for four or five years now, who's infringing on who? Let them come to him.
I dunno. The acronym is one thing, but the whole color scheme and punctuation thievery is reaching, at best. Yahoo's blog adds the exclamation point, and using pink/purple for a celebrity blog is what every single celebrity blog already uses. The yahoo blog is also 95% orange, while Frank's is black. Yahoo's is also a lot nicer on the eyes...
In the end, content is king with celebrity blogs. Quit worrying about the name (if his site is good, his readers will revolt and refuse to use the yahoo site) and keep posting pics of Lindsay's vagina; you can be pretty sure Yahoo won't post that.
Not entirely sure that I buy that, rytoid; Frank's site (whose title, by the way, has an abundance of exclamation points), as he points out, is certainly well-read enough in that celebrity-blog circle that someone from Yahoo's team must have read it at some point. As I said, it might be reaching it was just one thing (if the blog was called, say "lol!" for some inane reason), but it kinda adds up.
I agree with rytoid. I don't think it's at all strange that Yahoo! has added an exclamation point to the title of their celebrity blog, considering that their existing trademark uses an exclamation point as well, and the colour schemes really aren't very similar. Frank ought to be able to make a pretty good case that this constitutes trademark infringement, but I don't see strong enough evidence here to say that it was done on purpose. I think it's more likely that this completely unintentional. I dunno... I read a lot of gossip sites, and I've never heard of OMG. Yahoo! probably didn't bother to do their research properly before they named the site.
i see little to no similarity in the graphic design of these pages. if pink is used in each, it is likely for different reasons. perez hilton has more grounds to sue over this.
as for the exclamation points, could this similarity not be explained by the fact that "omg" is an exclamation? again, there is a different design and the exclamation points are used to different effects. in yahoo's case, it's a part of the logo -- not so in frank's case.
this strikes me as a publicity stunt.
I guess I'm just more sympathetic—at the very very least, even if you give Yahoo the benefit of the doubt, it's careless on their part to not have seen if there were any reasonably-successful entertainment blogs with the same name they were looking for.
(Oh, and Perez Hilton had better pay us for copyright infringement for the money he makes off of those shirts that copied Marc's designs before he thinks of suing anyone else.)
The first omg blog wins for having Jon Stewart on the header.