Unless you’ve been living under a rock (or were just offline the past two days) you know that a lot of sites chose to “black out” in protest of SOPA and PIPA. Obviously these movements would greatly change how we interact with the Internet,  but I was also interested to see how sites would use design to “black out”. I don’t know about you, but I was pretty impressed.

I collected some examples of how all different kinds of sites chose to display their SOPA protests and came across some pretty cool examples.

I’m sure Google’s design approach is no stranger to you. Still, I felt the need to include it.

A lot has been going on in the past few weeks in the digital world… just like any other week, but here are a few things that really caught my eye.

Pregnant? Put it on Facebook.

Yeah, you heard right.  Now lists of 3 parents, 5 aunts and uncles, and 17 cousins can meet the newest addition to Facebook’s family tree: expected children. These almost parents have the choice to even add the unborn child’s name if they really want to.  Everyone’s newsfeeds just got a little more personal.

FourSquare’s New Biz Pages:

FourSquare is allowing businesses to make it a lot easier to personalize and take control of their business pages.  It’ll be interesting to see how these new pages effects its success.

Possible Soon-To-Be Google Employee

Getting hired these days is no easy task,  especially not with a company like Google.  Matthew Epstein took creative matters into his own hands and is definitely standing out from the rest of Google’s job applicants with charm, humor, a mustache to die for, and a website you absolutely have to see.  Good luck, Matthew.

True Inspiration

Here’s one last thing I think that is worth mentioning. There’s a video online describing how college students are making legally blind students a priority, and rightfully so. Just watch the video. You won’t regret it.

Google+ and Spotify are two relatively new services to the US and both required invitations to get started. I’m not exactly sure how to feel about the invite only approach to launching new websites and services like these two. Sure, it seems to be working for Google+ right now but let’s think back on when Google Wave was also invite only.  Not as successful.  To some, it might feel like you’re the only one left off the guest list at the greatest party in town.

On the other hand there are some good reasons for such exclusive launches like building up anticipation and testing the site in certain markets. Or sometimes, like the very beginning of Facebook when it required members to have a .edu account,  the website is only meant for a certain crowd.

What do you think? Are Google+ and Spotify right in having invite only access?