I think that the popularity of portal sites in East Asian countries is tied to their high-context cultures, so I doubt they would be very popular in the low-context West.

The use of highly cluttered web designs is also a distinctly East Asian phenomenon, but I'm not sure what the cultural explanation for that would be. It's especially odd to see it in Japan, where a more sparse aesthetic dominated the traditional culture.

You reminded me of the sheer abominable genius of the website for Ling's Cars http://www.lingscars.com/ which is one of the finest examples of this in the UK.

I feel like your link should have a warning label of some kind.

> The use of highly cluttered web designs is also a distinctly East Asian phenomenon, but I'm not sure what the cultural explanation for that would be.

I'm not 100% sure either, but the explanation given in http://www.tofugu.com/2012/05/15/japanese-web-design-why-you... seems not too far off.

I think it has to do with East Asian languages in general having a much higher information density, so their designs also reflect that. To me, that author's examples of "beautiful web design" appear relatively contentless and unfinished (except for the first one), while those he dislikes are obviously content-centric and seem far more pragmatic and useful.

The bias is quite evident in that article: "One culture's clutter is another culture's useful information." Being from the East myself, I've always found the increasingly "information-averse" nature of the West to be a little odd.

Wow, that Tofugu site exemplifies the Hipster Phenomenon, with an always-there menu bar that takes a third of my browser window's vertical space!

What does "high-context" and "low-context" mean in this context?

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-_and_low-context_cultures

Short version, in a 'high context culture', things can be left unsaid and the cultural background will explain effectively to people within that culture (and less effectively to people outside that culture).

A Texan (the American south is high context) can say quite a bit with 'yep...' and letting the culture explain the rest of the meaning.

In a low context culture, less emphasis is placed on single word choices (though they can still be important) and more explanation of the entire context of the communication is done.

High context is vague. As in, you're expected to already have a good idea of the context.

I've worked for CSDN for 3 years, and have a few friends working for Github. The way of they made things are totally different.

:+1: for follow an organization

Sounds like, ahem, a browser based RSS aggregator and reader.