Has Slideshare Done Something Silly?

Love it or hate it sharing online stuff with other people has become normal.  So normal that there are any number of ways of doing so.  Tweetmeme was one of the 2009 darlings born out of the Twitter-scape.  Really simply Tweetmeme serves up “buttons” which any site owner can attach to a web post, article etc… which allows the viewer to send out a tweet telling the world they’ve read/seen it and want to share.

Today Tweetmeme founder Nick Halstead quietly tweeted himself…

dear @slideshare please stop using our trademarked design without using our service

When I asked Nick let me know that Slideshare have started using a re-sharing button on their website that looks… well here it is, have a look for yourself.

Compare that to the “retweet” button top right on this blog post.  So the difference is almost nothing, just the removal of the letters “re” and nothing else that I can easily spot.

Now Nick is a savvy chap.  Whilst I’m sure he has trademarked the button design I can’t really see this getting all legal but honestly I reckon Slideshare has overstepped the mark somewhat.  The intent of “their” tweet button is obvious, by passes Tweetmeme altogether and is sufficiently similar in design for me to call “WRONG!”

UPDATE (23rd March) - As pointed out by “Amused” in the comments, Slideshare were prompted enough to make a change to the retweet button overnight.  You can see it below.  Honestly I don’t think it’s enough.  Sure they’ve made 3 changes; colour is now blue, wording and the little triangle-bit has shifted to the right BUT it hardly shows imagination and kinda sucks of bad-faith to make such minimal changes as to appear different.  Especially so as they have been called out on it.  Come on Slideshare surely you have a graphics person capable of coming up with a button of your own?

The problem though has in no small part been of Twitter’s own making.  Look at the other two buttons.  A Facebook & Google Buzz set.  Those buttons are distinctly utilising the logo’s of the sites.  Surely Twitter should provide a Twitter created logo / button that sites could use – at least that way they would maintain some brand consistency.