Frazr: Internationalize or Someone Else will
Nick Gonzalez
37 comments »
The Samwer Brothers are up to the same game they started with their investment in the German version of Facebook, StudiVZ. They recently invested in a French and German Twitter clone called Frazr.
As Matt Marshall reports, the site is cloned right down to the welcome message: “Everyone wants to know: What are you doing? Tell them. On the Web, in a message, or phone”. The German version recently changed the message, but the French version has the old message. Check the screen caps below.
Foreign companies have been mirroring English based site concepts for some time now. Japan’s largest social network, Mixi, with 5 million members at the time, went to IPO last year at around a $1.5 billion market cap. Outright cloning has also been good business for foreign developers who are nimble enough to copy successful product and expose it to a new market. StudiVZ sold for $100 million. Xiaonei, a Chinese version, sold for an undisclosed amount.
There are countless other clones of successful sites being developed to capitalize on these language barriers, and some have established themselves as brands in their own right. Successful concepts will be developed in other languages, the only question is by whom.
Wow, that looks exactly the same.
Check out the Twitter Fan Wiki for a list of more Twitter clones (as of right now, there are 7 clones from Germany and 1 from France). Frazr seems to be the only one that has received funding, though.
The Samwer brothers didn’t start their strategy of copying ideas with studivz. They already became millionaires by copying ebay and selling their company ‘alando’ just after one year to ebay. That was already in 1999. After that they made some more money with their ring tone company Jamba!, a idea which they had equally copied.
Expensive and time-consuming though it be to do so (especially so for the “small-funded”), companies which fail to protect their valuable innovations and creations with proper trademark, copyright, country/region specific domain registrations, and; when and where available, patents as well; are just asking for such “copycatism.”
In addition to often finding such ripoffs virtually foreclosing their opportunity to transfer their success to other countries, if the copycat/s really take off, the originator/s could soon find themselves fighting their usurpers back on their own turf.
Seems like significant room for lawsuits in this internationalization?
Ridiculous - do they have an original thought or just steal other people’s work? If you’re starting a site here be sure to have the languages covered and find a way to exploit it in the EU. Better yet, make a defensible technology that thieves and cheats can’t readily copy. Easy money for them…while not much original comes from their work they can handily profit from watching our innovation and copying it.
That’s the problem with Web 2.0 sites - what’s really defensible? While it’s not “cool” or “respect-earning” to blatantly knock off Twitter, what’s Twitter going to do about it? At least the chances of it taking off in Europe are greater than in the US where mobile phones have a higher penetration rate than home internet access.
mixi was launched in February 2004.
Please do your research before concluding all similar products are ripoffs of one another. Just because there exists an English product doesn’t mean that similar non-English products copied the English ones.
Pish. I hereby claim that Americans copied civilization.
So me I found another site that is much better than those two: http://www.whisperz.org. You can write about everything and anything and I think it’s pretty cute no ?
Anyways it was just a comment
Yes, and Mixi is far more advanced than any other SNS, since 80% of the connections are coming from mobile phones…
I think you should get translated the screen capture of flickr !! ROFL, this Kay sucks, and this is not a good image for this tool !
Frazr isn’t even near of the Quality of http://texteln.de , which is not only a Twitter-Clone, but gives you tons of more functions.
Maybe TechCrunch should take a look at that service. For example you can add Pictures and Videos, and you have a blogging ability for unlimited size.
Obviously twitter users are more polite than frazr’s …
(You could have choosen a less rude screencapt.)
Marvel
Mark S, there was never a claim that Mixi was a clone or a rip-off. It was just an example of the social networking concepts developed through Friendster and precursors inspiring international versions.
ok guys, how many users does this website actually have ? I’ve been refreshing it for 2 hours and seen absolutely no updates came up. Question of the day: Who are Kenny and Jay ?
I can see where this could be a clever way to make quick money but, honestly, as a french, i’m appalled that both the website, and the content generated even exists.
That screencap from the french version has some offensive words against the pope……. just saying.
If you look at the German web 2.0 landscape it’s mostly all copies of yelp, etsy, thisnext, facebook, youtube, delicious, digg, and so on.
The only exception seems to be XING/OpenBC who managed to adapt the Friendster model to business and integrate a nice revenue generating premium option.
Hi there,
Ask to Ouriel his opinion about the screen shot of the french part
Jean-Marie
Whilst I would never wish for a company to join the TC deadpool, it certainly does give quite wide scope for headlines. May I suggest:
“Frazr Crane has left the building, good night Germany.”
Nick, I think your comment is directed at um…no. I’m just the guy bitching about this practice though I understand it completely. It’s an easy way to let other people do the work, test the concept, generate interest, and then you come in and have a bunch of monkeys copy it.
I’ve wrote a post contains 20 more Twitter-clone/twitter-like sites ,check at http://www.thws.cn/article.asp?id=1366
did you check the screenshot of Frazr… For non french speakers, they show a pic of the pope, and comments say: “I masturbate thinking about sarkozy” (newly electect french president)… not sure this type of social network helps in anything good!
Copiers exist everywhere, not only in Europe. When a new web reaches success many others copy them, in Europe and in the US. The fact is that the idea is only one part of the company. Then comes execution, and there is where many of them die… I admire more the first one, but I also think that the successful copier deserves some credit for implementing.
Disclosure: I’m European
I went to their site and clicked of German flag and then the French one. Both times it took me to the german version. Bizarre…
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We Will Create Your Very Own Domain Name - http://PowerNamer.com
Sorry Mark, it was directed to um..no
Do these clones have an open API?
Are there client apps for these clones?
there is another clone around the corner in germany. http://www.familyone.de
is a copycat of Geni.com