Trustypig.com Rips Off Smartypig.com Design
You hear about it almost everyday… there is a nicely designed web site done by a team (or sometimes an individual) that is not only nice to look at, but is also a unique idea, and a fledgling business struggling to be both born and survive in today’s depressed economy.
Des Moines has become a hotbed of web entrepreneurs, strategists, social marketing mavens, and other services and businesses catering to the tech community. I even wrote about some of them in a previous blog post, here - http://www.troyrutter.com/2008/07/08/big-fish-gets-cut-down-to-size-and-smiles.html.
One of those is a unique way to save money, and have relatives, friends and complete strangers contribute towards a savings goal. A new bank called Smartypig.
Now, take a look at the following site, a complete ripoff (based in Romania) -
http://www.trustypig.com
Their blog currently has comments UN-MODERATED… so feel free to tell these bozos how you really feel about the “Trustworthiness” of the Trusty-Pig.
I just don’t get how some people find this “acceptable.”
Bad pig!
Technorati Tags: smartypig, romania, trustypig
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Comments
Troy,
Thanks for the post. It is truly amazing to the extent some folks go to rip-off the work of others.
Thanks!
Mike Ferrari, SmartyPig co-founder
[...] ALT and TITLE AttributesIn my brand hijack post, I used two screenshots from Troy Rutter. In the external links I used our keyword in the TITLE attribute that links to his images and [...]
[...] not stand for it, and we’re hoping some of you non-Iowans won’t stand for it, either. Troy Rutter was the first to let us know about this (I think), and since then, Andy Brudtkuhl has started a [...]
[...] One thing companies can do is to enlist others to reprint details of the webjacking, mentioning the webjacker in the title of the article, while taking great care not to link to the webjacker or the webjacked website. Such was the case recently in Des Moines. The successful online savings program SmartyPig was recently webjacked by a Romanian concern calling itself TrustyPig. As you can see, in an effort to undermine the webjacking, all links in this post link to the legitimate SmartyPig cite, rather than to the TrustyPig website. Here is the legitimate SmartyPig website courtesy of Try Rutter’s New Media Original Blog. [...]
The irony is in TrustyPig.com’s huge, honking banner that screams “Think Outside the Box” … clearly their web designers should have taken heed. I also see that TrustyPig.com has modified their site design ever so slightly. Not enough to be considered out of the wood in my book.
[...] identical, right down to the logo, layout, and color scheme. Take a look at this post from Troy Rutter, which compares screen shots of the two sites. A group of social networkers has taken on the [...]
[...] steals SmartyPig website via NerdFlood.com TrustyPig - A Webjacker Gets Pwned via BlawgIT.com TrustyPig.com Rips Off SmartyPig.com design via TroyRutter.com Brand Hijack - Blogging via Getanewbrowser.com TrustyPig - Social Brand Hijack [...]
[...] steals SmartyPig website via NerdFlood.com TrustyPig - A Webjacker Gets Pwned via BlawgIT.com TrustyPig.com Rips Off SmartyPig.com design via TroyRutter.com Brand Hijack - Blogging via Getanewbrowser.com TrustyPig - Social Brand Hijack [...]
[...] not a 100 percent ripoff, but I’ll tell you the one thing that bothers me the most. Those little lines under the main [...]
I’d go comment on their site but I don’t want to give up my email address. We’ll circulate some blog posts like this one and make sure everyone is aware of their wrongdoings.
Social media justice FTW!