German Twitter clone Dukudu is listed for sale on eBay.
The project is said to have cost its developers €25000. Despite a relatively low Alexa score, Dukudu ranks at a respectable 2,608 in Germany. At the time of writing the auction has 28 bids with a top bid of €9000 (it was about 1/3 less yesterday).
The developers claim in the auction listing that Dukudu is more than a simple Twitter clone, being “more beautiful, rock-solid, full of important additional features and more secure”. Visually it is well designed, but that’s as far as I could get, the site is entirely in German and does not offer an English language version.
Dukudu joins the TechCrunch Deadpool.
No English language version? That might be a big reason why the site couldn’t compete with Twitter and is selling itself on Ebay.
Allen Vartazarian
Famesource.com – Claim your fame!
http://www.famesource.com
dukudu.de NEVER wanted to compete with Twitter outside of germany. Our focus was an developing THE perfect mircroblogging platform FOR GERMAN SPEAKING USERS- without the mistakes twitter made – and WITH a lot of long demanden additional fetaures like group-functionality, auto-accept friends, “@friend” for direkt messages, more secure sms-system (with OPTINAL additiona sms-pin) and many many more.
Our goal NEVER was competing with someone outside germany, austria and swizzerland.
Christian Reder
http://www.dukudu.de
If the app is so successful in Germany, why are they selling on eBay? If it truly is “more beautiful, rock-solid, full of important additional features and more secure”, then why sell? It can’t cost much to run an operation as such.
Cheers,
Aidan
http://www.MappingTheWeb.com
Wait, deadpool? Is something really dead when it sells? Should that not depend on who ultimately buys it? MySpace and Flickr aren’t dead, though they were both for sale at one point.
Josh
generally speaking if it hits eBay we add it to the Deadpool as it is the exit of last choice, but theoretically speaking you are right
Let’s just hope Zuckerberg doesn’t put Facebook up for sale on eBay (reserve: $3 billion, cash only, buyer pays shipping), or you’ll have to change your policy.
I think it is absolutely ridiculous not to release an English version of a project which is supposedly “superior” to current English versions.
What is there to lose?
Suggested course of action:
1) Evaluate the product (if needbe with a german translator)
2) Decide how much it actually is worth
3) Make the offer, if it’s a legit offer directly attempt to contact the owner and bypass eBay to keep it on the low-down
4) Transform it into a multi-language site, employing every user desired language
5) Go big, be the international alternative to Twitter, etc
This all really depends on the ‘is it really better’
recycle,recycling,reusable energy, scrap metal, waste, environmental, green supporter, manufacturing, international trade, buy/sell, machinery, My RS, match, company
True, Sebastian. I wonder, why a English version was not released. I see Christian saying, the intention / mission itself was’nt there.
very good attempt, Christian. I too feel, there’s a lot of functionality, which twitter does’nt have, and is very much needed.
~ the sharp…
The prob with Twitter and it’s clones is simply that they don’t have a reliable business model. As I see it, they’re simply burning money by sending millions of short msgs, which they don’t get for free from the carriers…
The business model woudl be derived from the critical mass. Moreover, there has to be a roadmap also, to go forward on. Self expression has to take a form further down the road as well.
That’s when you hit revenue streams..
If the going is tough and unprofitable ,best strategy is to quit.
http://www.tekn...ld.blogspot.com
I’m from germany and had never heard of Dukudu until this day
So … there are many other twitter like sites in germany that are more famous (frazr, wamadu … )
A++++++++ RIPOFF!
Why buy dukudu, when you can have Frazr for free: http://www.fraz.../frazr-for-free
#12 “The business model woudl be derived from the critical mass.”
Being what exactly?
Ads with each msg? Not in 140 chars. CPM or whatever would be too high in comparison to short msg costs. Plus: User experience goes down…
Ads in extra msg? User experience… Mobile spam…
Subscription? The “next twitter” will happily stand by…
Licensing software? No, ’cause of open api…
In my opinion for twitter and the likes there’s only one exit strategy: Selling the whole thing to a telco who has no cost sending short msgs. But then there would still be a network to network msg cost problem…
Hey Duncan… just wanted to let you know, I wrote about this a day ago… at that point it was at $7000US.
http://www.cent...twitter-service
Interesting auction info on ebay.
I hope the buyer can speak German.
Recently found your blog. Your posts are great!
Elizabeth G.
Great idea on adding an english version – let’s watch to see if the auction goes up – it’s up to 15k euro now!
And if you are an english speaker – use this link for the auction – then the eBay page will be in english and the US$ will be shown:
http://cgi.ebay...em=110141009440
Who buys a little stupid clone with no users?! And a crash between the first weeks?
“The project is said to have cost its developers €25000.”
I mean, seriously???
So, that is the way to get TC coverage – sell your project on eBay!
how can it cost 25000,
– to copy and paste? (lol)
What we should do is have some kind of bet on the final auction price. And whomever comes closest wins a prize.
lets buy it and forward it to twitter
why should dukudu translate a Twitter clone into twitter language?
you can not compete with Twitter in the same language, but maybe there´s a chance in German, French, Spanisch, Polish …
Rajeev –
Spoken like a true loser. If it’s not get rich quick then give up . . .
Maybe this will get me some TC coverage…
I will be putting my site, SwitchPlanet.com (Alexa 31,000+/-), for sale on eBay next week!!!
Greetings from Munich.
The biz model was right on.
The mistake was that they did not abolutely, positively, downrightly copy everything from Twitter. Hello Mr. and Mrs. Samwer. Yeehah.
“The biz model was right on.”
Go ahead and explain the model and path to profitability for us.
I just don’t get it why would someone want to know whos taking out their laundry etc in different parts of the world live. And yet to be copied even wow. I sure wouldn’t copy a bad idea.
Any idea why is Twitter popular? What is that people like about it?
Seems very shady. I would think twice before bidding.
*sigh* why oh why again the reference to a statistic which has so many obvious flaws that for the purpose of comparing this to what the tc audience is used from american comparable companies it only gives you so wrong numbers?
I think it’s very interesting that companies sell themselves on ebay. I wonder how many business people know this and what kind of traffic results. During the last internet boom, it was the schwag, signage, etc. that was sold off on ebay when a company was tanking. This time around, it’s the whole company itself
It’d be cool if there were some kind of formal marketplace like this online, but it’d have to come from somebody or something connected, like TC, in order to get the really good people you want buying your company.
whoever buys it is going to fail again. I don’t understand why people want to waste E15000!
>> Development costs for the code only where at about 25.000 Euro !!!
How do they calculate it? One hour writing code = 1,000 bucks or what?
The funniest thing is…
“… has *** not been officially launched *** and ist still in public BETA phase. ”
LMAO!!!
20,000 dollars for an IDEA????
One reason they may not have expanded outside of Germany is the difficulty in setting up short codes and handling SMSs from different countries. It can be complicated and costly to support even a dozen countries. There is no point opening up the server to an international audience if the users can’t use the most important features.
Having said that, I’ve made exactly the same mistake in the past. I developed a fairly major site and focused on building up a user base in my home country. Unfortunately it didn’t take off in a huge way. I had a couple of interested parties contact my about licensing the site for use in their home (non English-speaking) countries, but without that technology built right into the platform it was not a feasible proposition.
The slight effort it takes to prepare for a multilingual audience when developing a site greatly increases your chances of reaching critical mass *somewhere* in the world. Orkut is the classic example of this.
Guys, there is a world and business outside of english speaking countries.
Not every project has to be available in English to be profitable. On the other hand, it should not be too difficult to develop the project with internationality in mind. However, for a small team it can be right to start smaller (seems like there are only 3 of them).
Not everyone has the money to invest too much in such a project.
But, I can’t understand how someone can bid 15.000 Euro for such a project , which has not been launched yet and you can’t see the code. Especially the fact that they are selling on Ebay seems very strange to me.
I think that this was built by a bunch of students and now the project is to expensive (beside private reasons, that is what they state).
To me this auction does not make a very professional impression. The way how they try to sell this is just ridiculous. Some passages sound very funny:
- “dukudu.de ist wesentlich besser durchdacht, geplant und umgesetzt.”
–> Yes, of course! Or would anyone tell that the website is worse than twitter?
- “Das System wurde von einer professionellen Agentur, die viele Jahre Erfahrung mit großen Projekten und Skalierbarkeit hat umgesetzt.”
–> A professional agency? Hmmm, I couldn’t find much about this strange Ranaro GmbH. Seems like they do not have a website…
- “dukudu.de wurde noch nicht offiziell gestartet und beworben. Wir haben lediglich eine öffentliche BETA-Phase durchgeführt. Bezüglich Bewerbung und Positionierung stehen Ihnen also noch alle Möglichkeiten offen.”
–> Nice try to sell the fact that this website is still in closed BETA as something positive.
- vom Anwalt erstellte AGB und Datenschutzbestimmungen
–> Yippieee, they are selling their terms& conditions plus the data protection info (it was made by a real lawyer!!!)
Well, we could go on with this…
If they would have put just a little bit more effort into the auction text…
@Jesus: Just come by. I have a few projects for you, which you can program for me. If you can do this dukudu thing in 25h you are my man.
Thanks for the info, we have also posted over at Twittown, the Twitter community and forums.
http://twittown.com
Everybody should be away that twitter and it’s clones are currently burning money FAST, not unlike youtube who were said to burn 1 million / month… With bulk sms prices in germany at around 4 cents / each dukudu.de could easily burn 5-digit amounts per day…
So I can understand the point of developing but not starting the project live.
and
- they have no active users
and
) based on a my own user-management framework
i would build this site excl the design in less then 24h too (and iam not jesus
so 15k is much too much
@gerhard: give me your details…
I guess Jesus is too busy.
for what?
to create a new twitter clone?
do you think that make sense?
Just for those who’re interested: In the last 30 seconds the auction went from 25,000 euro to 43.208,00 (VAT incl) and the german company Allesklar.com AG (operating local directories) published a press release that they were the successfull bidders.
@Gerhard: No, not really interested in a twitter clone. I still don’t get that twitter thing, but there is other stuff…
Anyway, it was more meant like a joke.
unbelievable, 43k for nothing….
@Gerhard: what is 43k compared to the You-Tube deal. On the other side: the guys at Google know how to make money. Maybe I am just too narrow minded …
…ich habe nun den deutschen ableger von netppl entdeckt, funktioniert super und kostenlos und viel besser als twitter!
netppl.de/mike