Verwandt.de: German Geni Clone

it must be extremely frustrating for sites like geni to see copycats do so well abroad. especially in countries that seem to adopt these services at a faster rate than in the u.s.. everyone knows that being technologically superior and/or 1st to market does not guarantee success.

US is far behind in technological superiority then Germany. Just so you know.

Good support for your argument John.

I wish the U.S. could clone the German busing system.

john69 — WTF??

Anyway - besides that guy, my only comment is that perhaps Geni should be creating their own clones all over the world. This is an international market, it is almost impossible to patent protect a site even inside the US, so you shouldn’t expect anything different abroad.

I suppose Geni could have offered their site in German. There’s a concept.

Looks like they definitely missed out on a primed market though. That is a pretty fast adoption rate. Maybe they should target France before another pops up there…

Shane:

John doesn’t need to say anything else. His name is John69. You can tell what he is thinking about.

All that choice German porn.

all they need to do is localize it for language. the family trees should all be the same network…since some of us have relatives all over the world.

Time for integration between Verwandt and Geni.

Geni should have added localised language support a loooooong time ago.

However, this one is better designed than Geni. And no, it’s not just language localization - it’s Flash, not HTML; they have to recreate the whole app.

The people on the top look like awesome weemee’s.

Nick, we need the entire transport system here.

So, I agree with Emre’s post. The germans might be not innovative enough, but they do their very best of the copycat itself. So I think, the US give us the innovation and “we” do optimize it…
Just another perception of globalization.

replicating or copying successful businesses in all industries to new geographies has been happening since time began!! Its just that now this is happening faster and with more publicity… US as leading cloner? Hmmm, lets see.

Online gaming - US clones Korea, Japan and Scandanavia… Mobile Services.. jeez where to start as there are so many… Chat and P2P.. EU and Israel..

1. familyone.de is probably closer to geni.com than verwandt.de

2. I agree that there is a lot of copying but as you say: it is sad that new or innovative startups like xing.com, plazes.com, imedo.de, edelight.de or mymuesli.de do not get mentioned!

So, why do you pick the copy-cats at techcrunch.com?

I guess it is because you know exactly what the websites and concepts are all about and do not have to do research. Moreover, a proven concept is more likely to succeed than a totally new one.

geni has not been successful…no matter how many times you all at techcrunch claim it is. give it up.

Stiksel, fouder of last.fm, is Austrian. The CEO from kyte.tv sure has a German accent I’d say. Just to name another two innovative web 20 companies. The education, innovation, etc. is done outside the US, the incorporation of the company is then done in London or Silicon Valley.

and in all fairness, there’s not a whole awful lot of creativity one can do in a family tree software. They all function pretty much the same. Ant they all actually kind of look the same, even a couple that look better than Geni’s that I’ve seen out there.

Jimmy - If Germany gets to count Austrian entrepreneurs then we get Mexico and Canada.

It’s so irritating and ridiculous to see things like this. What can U.S. sites do to file suit / litigate against these german clones?

It’s okay to have competition, but to clone is f****** unbelievable. Get an original idea and execute a******!

Michael: better not. someone did that a while ago.

It’s about offering language alternatives. You know, it’s difficult to get signed up your mother on English website, when he doesn’t speak English.

Startups don’t usually offer multi-language support, except really few ones and they will face local competition because of that.

Well, it’s really useless to yell after the copycats. Not only because the process of copying and improving is daily milk in every business but also because companies that don’t achieve to have the big picture, consider the whole market and the needed adaptions just don’t deserve anything else.
Copies are the first step to build something proprietary (Did Google invent the concept of a search engine??) the US is the test market for the EU, not more not less.

There is also another clone called familyone.de they have been around about 4 months. However verwandt.de has the better position they had a campaign (probably cause of the clone brothers) on studivz about 3 weeks ago.

Hi Nick,

misspelled Verwandt later in the post. “Vanderwandt”.

Best, Stean

@12 - best point in the whole discussion. Cloning is a reality, and it works in all directions. And indeed, it has been going on since the invention of fire and the wheel…

Now, while I absolutely dont condone of cloning, reverse engineering and copy-cats, the core of the problem is of course that US companies (understandably so, initially) are still completely english-centric. And while the smaller EU countries such as the benelux and the nordics have almost universal english language capabilities, the larger countries such as Germany, France, Spain and Italy don’t. So what are people supposed to do when they see something great emerging in the US - wait 4 years until someone decides to localize the site?

And findally, indeed, @16 - how much differentiation can you have in family trees. Geni already has the same design features every other AJAX or RUBY built website of the Web2.0. Copying the copiers is just a little less onerous I guess

It is interesting to see how many seem to be badly offended by foreign clones of services. If you look at any industry other than software, note the exact same offerings by competing firms. I am talking about computer hardware, automotive, maybe even trivial things cereals or sports shoes.
Wake up! If someone doesn’t serve a market well, someone else will do it at their best ability. I never thought studivz.net (the correct domain) would take of because of the much better offering of Facebook. While Europeans (and more so the geek centric) do speak perfect English, a local offering will always be preferred to something foreign. At least by the critical large mass, who could give a damn about where it is from or who invented it - as long as it works fine for them!

Instead of copying in come cases I´d say “using best practice”. I´ve seen American sites that have copied features and innovations from other sites in the world like crazy - and especially from Europe.

They difference is: most of the American sites act like they invented it.

But –they didn´t.

Don’t forget China as a cloning capital too! Bababian.com VS like Flickr, Jiwai.de VS Twitter (Germany’s ccTLD might be a good asset for clone success?) and more… And Baidu Baike (Baidu Encyclopedia) might be the worst Wikipedia copyright violator (Google news).

I join in with the voices that are amused by the so called indignation of “clones”

Alot of what you considered innovative services from startups in the US actually are clones of
Cyworld, Freechal, Mixi, Habbo Hotel, Fileguri, G Market, Mohae (Twitter is a clone), Naver, Terra, etc.

Understand your internetational internet history before you get emotional over it.

Look…we’re not condemning you all for your ignorance. We are not condemning you for your “homerism”.

We are condemning you for getting indignant that certain concepts are indeed innovative. They’re not. Many people already involved in the industry before many of you came in already saw which way things were headed.

It is the execution that differentiates more often than not.

Still this points out a lack that is existent not only here among the TechCrunch population but on Sand Hill Road as well.

They think the world is Silicon Valley. They do not try to seriously source deals from Korea, Brazil, Japan, Argentina, South Africa, Singapore unless they are syndicated in.

This then influences the commentators in this space and then onwards to all of you.

So I don’t fault Michael Arrington for his uh…faulty perspective…it is the environment and I remember how hard it is in America to look beyond your own shores. You think the best and the most valuable only reside between the land that keeps your feet from getting wet in the Pacific and the Atlantic.

I understand the shock, denial, and backlash that occurs when that is not the case.

First of all, the verwandt.de-team is honoured to be mentioned on TechCrunch. And if your service is similar to an U.S. one, you have to take the heat.

However, there is always a different perspective on things:

* One could call Geni.com a clone itself. There is a bunch of “offline” software for creating family trees. And Ancestry.com allows for easy online family tree creation as well

* But choice and competition are the back-bone of successful economies. Good luck, there is more than one newspaper, more than one car company. Nobody´s blaming Lexus for pretty much copying Mercedes

* And let´s not forget: It is all about execution. Lexus is outselling Mercedes etc. in the U.S. Better quality, better execution. Consumers around the world should be happy

We crossed 1.5 million profiles yesterday - in just 6 weeks after our launch. That is as fast as Geni.com in a market that is at least 5 times smaller. Our users love our UI that is targeted at young people (older people love family trees anyhow). And we are getting great mass market press coverage (TV, print, radio, and ALL online sites).

And please, localization is NOT about only getting the language right. You must have a true local approach and than still execute. Ancestry.com has set up an office in Munich, has a great site and is doing a good job in Germany. However, Alexa ranks verwandt.de as #551 in Germany and Ancestry.de #4.395 (Geni.com is #2.899 in U.S.).

While you might call verwandt.de a clone, that does not apply to the Germany economy. Germany does the most exports in the whole world. And that NOT because of low wages, but because of great innovation. Please note we have founded getgo.de, dialo.de, and Dealjaeger.de (social commerce market leader in Germany) before.

Looking forward for a lively discussion. Best, Sven (co-founder of verwandt.de)

at #18: Your comment is so far from reality! I assume in your opinion non-US people should be sitting in front of their PCs awestruck and thankful until the US innovator thinks the time has come for loacalizing their services. Wake up, this is not how business works in these days. Build your platforms to be multilingual from the very beginning, hire a few local guys to give it an indiviudal touch and start market your services abroad. Or - if you want to concentrate on your market first - be proud that you had a good business idea and see cloning as a proof of concept.

That much emotional discussion on what you call cloning prooves two things:
* The money invested in these business models is not that valuable - and this is what make those upset, who claim cloning in web 2.0 as a problem
* Second: The Web2.0 story is not a story about software, but one about data. Geni seems to have overseen this, by not offering foreign languages. So if someone has STOLEN geni.com data and put it in verwandt.de, then we can call it cloning.

Conclusions:
1. Sucessfully copied business models aren’t that good, unless one sucessfully protects them as good as a Bill Gates did. (Still can’t believe that!)
2. The Web 2.0 isn’t a software competition, but a data competition. There is and will be very unlikely a data overlap of geni.com and verwandt.de, although the software seems to be similar. SOFTWARE CLONING IS NOT AN ISSUE !. If a site does not accumulate as much data as possible in shortest time, forget it.

Take a look at JimDo.com, great German Service an NO copycat. It`s worth because it`s cool, simple and a really helful service.

Besat regards

Andreas

Isn´t the point that German/European startups get only covered by Techcrunch & Co. when there are similar US sites? There´s a lot of innovation going on, that´s basically ignored because of the language barrier. That´s why it´s great to have new sites like blognation (http://www.blognation.com/) that offer additional views on the international startup scence.

Glad to see the review coming up here. I have written exactly the same a couple of weeks ago on my German blog.

Can’t stand the German clones… only copy/paste innovation as you guys said.

Hopefully the US startups realize that sometimes localization is more important than new features… and all of a sudden the clones have no argument for existing.

Sorry for the double post… but maybe some Germans want to come over to my blog and start the discussion in German… since the article is 6 weeks old:

http://document-dot-write.blog.....-klon.html

This would have made sense if it were a Japanese clone site, not a German clone site.

i can say ipod is also a kind of clone of sony walkman….don’t forget windows..may b the market presence where u r decides success than originality…its not un usual in tech industry to clone successful models…Look at the history…one who exploited the inevntion got more success than original inventor…

You U.S. guys should realize that we Germans don’t rip off all your “superb” ideas because 95% of these ideas are boring flops.

Why should we wait X years the arrogant geni waybe will start a localized German version?

Note: We’re upfront and we know our market. It’s not that “just adding a new template with German language” and the German market is done!

You’re just too slow and inflexible. Like Twitter that does nothing so a Pownce must come…

its not abt german or japanese or someone…there r many youtube,facebook clones operating in america and arnd the world…….may b all of them dont get attention…people read famous blogs and make judgement….go and do some research you can find hell lot of clones in US…

Not only did they ‘borrow’ the Geni concept, they have actually ‘borrowed’ artwork directly from WeeWorld.com, rather similar logo too.

Some people are bold indeed!

“Adopting” ideas is different from being a copy cat. The first website in the world was http://www.cern.ch. Were all the other websites copy cats? The first car in the world was German, were all of the inital US car manufacturers just copy cats?

The use of the word clone in this context is completely off, as building an equivalent service is not an identical reproduction.

Getting into a market requires localization, as you cannot expect users to adjust to a product that is built for US standards. Translation is just one small step, but hardly sufficient. US tech companies have a pretty awful track record in terms of proper localization and local execution in international markets and it really hasn’t improved that much over the last 20 years.

Let’s put it in one sentence: If US sites don’t want or don’t see the piece of the cake that they could get in big markets like Germany, France etc, then locals will take it. Apart from this, I would always distinguish between a “good inspiration” and “bad clone”. The first takes an idea and improves it, the second just copies the basics (and maybe even the layout) and then nothing more happens.

Copycats are Bullshit, but I think there are much more good innovative Pages in Germany: Xing, Hitflip.de, Dealjaeger.de or edelight are nice german products. Hitflip for example is on its way to the US this year.

Greets from Dr. Tea

So what?

In the end, it’ the user who will choose the best engine, i.e. the site which offers the best value will eventually survive the battle. If you just copy and do not improve you will not get the people necessary to reach the “tipping point”. So you need to innovate, be it incrementally or more radically. As a result this chain is only spurring further innovation which again will benefit the user.

That’s why you should not complain but rather let things develop themselves - you will benefit anyway; that’s just how the business works…

Note that Verwandt is also NOT localized.

You may have relatives around the world, but they won’t necessarily share your notion of “family”.

Note that the WORLD don’t need websites from the States only because they’re able to make their own social networks and stuff!

Just look at killerstartups.com what bullshit came everyday from the States…

the problem is that in Germany it is nearly impossible to get financing for an original idea in the “start-up phase”. The VCs/business angel in GER would rather invest in a copycat idea.

If you have an original idea you go to US investors if you cannot finance it yourself. Unfortunately the dotcom boom wiped out a lot of seed-financing VCs in GER, and still has not recovered since.

46 - Yeah just look at the “bullshit” we create every day that is copied by you talentless ass clowns. If you don’t “need” the states it sure doesn’t show by your lack of creativity.

Why the concern over someone copycatting Geni?? Isn’t it a copycat of Ancestry.com and how many other sites? However, Geni can’t even provide the basic resources for genealogical research (GEDCOMs, source record DBs) even after the $100M infusion? I say Geni is no better than Verwandt.. they both seek to exploit the ignorant and lazy for profit. Their only “innovations” are bubbly interfaces that suck one’s time away in a fury of sheer nothingness.

28 aka John:

You do realize you’re on a US website right? You can feel free to go browse some other website if you hate the states so much. The examples of “innovative” companies you list is a joke at best, in fact those very sites have copied other ideas themselves!

I am also amused that you are here defending a company for outright copying of a site, when YOU yourself got pissed at another company doing the same thing to you:

John K
“The company I work for Freechal.com has had its design and logo copied exactly by another site…and they are fraudlently linked to our customer support for THEIR site….”

You are a hypocrite, and an idiot.

Dont forget….The mother of all copy cats, Microsoft is an american company…….

There’s a big difference between “copying” and “cloning”. Is that so hard for some of you to understand? While you could accuse many companies of copying, they usually take a concept or product, differentiate it, and improve it in some form. Very few things today are completely new, so probably 95% of companies could fit in to this category.

Cloning however, is a complete lack of talent and creativity. You are taking the exact same thing that someone else designed and using it for your own purposes without substantially adding any work of your own.

Proving once again that the U.S. is the land of the innovators to a large extent. Yes, there are innovators around the world, but there seem to be more “cloners” than innovators.

*ipod is not the 1st MP3 player
*Google is not the 1st search engine
*windows is not the 1st OS
*Intel Microprocessor is not the first chip..

Still they r not classified as clones why??? because they never simply sit on what others created..they built from there…

in case you DO understand German you should read this:

http://blogbar.de/archiv/2007/.....0-startup/

The primarily problem here is NOT the copycat issue - it is that most of the “originals” as well as “copies” are just not having a true potential to stay. AND this whole hype, where true innovations like Xing, spreadshirt, myMuesli and many more indeed face the fact that in Germany it is nearly impossible to get financing for an original GOOD idea in this hyped “start-up environment”. The VCs/business angel in GER only invest peanuts in copycat ideas and are mostly incapable of getting the point of true innovations.

Glad that there are exceptions
http://www.thealarmclock.com/e.....r_web.html

Enjoy this discussion!

I think some comments are missing the distinction between blatant copying of an interface and simply competing in the same category. Verwandt took a lot of the layout and even images directly from Geni. It makes sense for other companies to compete in the space, but lifting the UI and functionality from Geni is just blatant cloning.

This is by no means a U.S. vs. the rest phenomenon. Look back to when Google copied Yahoo’s promo material and other examples.

@57: Just join and you will see that Verwandt is much better than Gayni.

58 - How is it better when it’s a blatant ripoff? Maybe you should go fire up one of the ole gas chambers in germany and place yourself in it.

Obviously the discussion is a little bit heated. While I appreciate the posts in favor of us, I can also understand the other perspective. However, in my eyes it is not worth “fighting” over the issue and get too emotional.

Especially this should NOT turn into a discussion about U.S. versus Germany. I think both countries produce great innovations. And the Valley is truly a great place with people from all over the world coming togehter.

In that spirit comments 58 (by “Achtung Blitzkrieg!”) and 59 (by “59″) should be deleted, since they do not add value to the discussion.

Sven, Co-Founder of verwandt.de

Sven, why don’t you comment a little on your blatant cloning of all style and function of the website while you’re here?

If you would have done more original work you wouldn’t be getting the heat you are seeing here. I have nothing against Germans, and honestly I like them quite a bit. But I don’t think you have executed your business plan very well from an ethical perspective.

Germany and Web 2.0. That’s simply a Copy & Paste-Generation. They are so boring and rather stupid. No ideas, no innovation, still a ridiculous thing. We should kick them in their fat a****.

… but we don’t have GWB … :p

I would like to throw into the discussion a b-school perspective:

Success is what judges clones! There are concepts like “second but better” or “second but elsewhere” and they are perfectly accepted, yet still hard to realize.
Finally all innovation takes inspiration somewhere, but in the end it is about getting things right and making users or customers happy. If that is what you achieve, you will have success and some people might be envious. If you do a cheap clone in the same market and users probably realise that its a clone, and no one will use it. Then you might have lost… Otherwise you are just a clever businessperson.

(Yes, I am german as well, though I dont like verwandt that much. But have been studying business at a french school in India and the UK)

Silly nerds, it’s just the internet. Who F****** cares? A relatively minute population of people. The rest of us use the internet for email, porn, and wasting time. The rest of you beta-males use it to air out your useless opinions and yawn-inducing perspectives.

64 - Obviously you care…either that or you’re a retard for reading & posting about things you don’t care about.

@ 50

BRAVO! I am flattered by the research you undertook on me heh.

except one thing….Copying EXACTLY THE SAME LOGO and UI…we have no problem with people copying elements…hell we don’t even mind if they are in the same competitive space or copying elements of the UI for use in another application.

No problem.

What we do mind is two things.

1) The site has been using phishing tactics and fooling users into coming to their site…which is a pron site. Look if they were a video site…we would be amused, flattered by the imitation…but understand its about the execution.

However, when they resort to phishing tactics AND then lead unsuspecting users to a pron site…and we are accused of THEIR tactics?

Big problem.

2) Their customer support tab connects to OUR CUSTOMER SUPPORT TEAM. That was the largest issue.

Yes. its like trying to complain to MS about a Vista issue only to be talking to Apple’s OSX CS team…Don’t you think it would make one pretty teed off?

YAY! let’s celebrate “Lack of Reading Comprehension Day”! Followed by “SPLICE A LinkedIN Entry OUT OF CONTEXT DAY!”

Idiot.

Sven,
I think admitting cloning of the WYSIWYG is a better way to get emotions down here.
Since you are here involved, you can also share a bit of your research, you likely have done before the launch of your site, there might be other, similar examples, that existed earlier than geni, even looking similar.

I used Ahnenblatt.de for many years, to manage my family tree. Its free, it allows the full privacy and more importantly, it allows importing and exporting into/from all major genealogical Data formats. I also entered some data into Geni.com, but my family did not adopt this for more than a couple of days.

So Sven, if verwandt.de has a function to import and export into genealogic data formatted files, this is the first major point in your favour.
Second however, there must be a certainly well thought concept of privacy vs. sharing of data, i.e. not everything I can see, should also be exportable.

Being a German entrepreneur, i am embarrassed by this copycat discussion.

Basically, i dont think improving existing business models isnt that bad- no one blames Mr Ford, Detroit, that he built cars which were developed in Germany.

But the exact copy of layout, colors and design is a pure shame. How is this to be justified?

Germany and Web2.0 … that’s a crazy thing.
There are many blatant clones of US StartUps like StudiVZ – Facebook, Frazer – Twitter …
And, yeah, verwandt.de is close to geni.com.

The ‘couse of that is: if you in germany build a new maschine or an engine for a car, you get a whole of money. But if you build a web startup … you get nothing, if the application is something new and not proven.

So the most german SartUps copy&paste killer apps and say, that the application is workin’ in US;-)

66.

you have a problem with someone copying your logo and UI, but you think it’s ok as long as it’s not your site huh?

John Kwag - You’re acting like a jackass, plain and simple. You came on here all hot posting about how it’s ok for this company to rip off another company’s work, bashing the us, etc. And it turns out you can’t even back yourself up. Next time try toning down your rhetoric a little.

My reading comprehension is just fine, in fact you just reconfirmed it by your statement on another site “Copying EXACTLY THE SAME LOGO and UI” as yours. Again, do you see much difference? You certainly didn’t appreciate someone copying your work did you? It’s the same principle with this site, in fact it’s worse.

wow, what a debate. But I don’t get the point. Question: What about Henry Ford? Was his car a copy cat? After all, he didn’t invent it though a lot of people around the world still think so. The car is a great example of a German innovation turned into a great mass product by an American. Back in the day Europe was leading with innovations and slow to bring their products to international markets. So the products where adopted locally. With Web innovations today it tends to be the other way around.

So what? Just as America was well capable of innovation in he late 1800s, though the car example suggests otherwise, this is true for Germany (or rather Europe) today. You’ll find plenty of clones and plenty of original ideas. Going both ways.

Here’s a challenge: I believe the company I’m currently building, Trupoli.com, to be an original idea. From Germany. It’s a rating platform for politics. Though the US is way ahead in Web-Politics, I haven’t found anything similar there. I am happy to be convinced otherwise.

it seems german websites need to be a copycat to get mentioned @ techcrunch, although it seems this was nearly a robbery of ideas. but apart from this, there is much more interesting here. one just should have a look at this language area, and i´m afraid techcrunch does not unless the topic is “copycat”.

why does flickr received those problems during the launch of their german localization? why is linkedin far away from being a true competitor to xing in germany? why lost del.icio.us its position of being the no.1 bookmarker to mister wong? cause they do not seem to look to this market in-depth, and that is why we have a potential for adapting (or call it copying) successful ideas in this market.

#73 Fully correct.
In other words: What you can easily copy, cannot be the business model.

One of the things that always puzzles me when looking at copycats of successful services from the US is: why don’t you provide a german language version right from the start? How many services have them even years after launch? With Flickr it took Yahoo to come until they translated it.

This would be so damn easy and provide a market of at least 100 million more people. And close the room for copycats right away.

So why complain if all that happens here is that people in Germany use Business Opportunities, just like it has always been.

that kyte.tv dude is swiss, just to let you know. and well, “copycat” is a relative term when it comes down to the basic concepts. isn’t basically every startup copying an idea or service someone had before and just made it a little bit better?

whiney googagin.

Uh, I wanted to write a comment to this post a few days ago, but the discussion here was kind of “heated”. Anyhow, it seems to have cooled down a little now, so here’s what I wanted to write:

I joined a German service/social network I while ago, which I believe deserves to be mentioned together with Xing and others coming from Germany: sleeq.de.

Sleeq’s focus is the ability to see where your friends are and what they are doing. Yes yes, I know there are similar services, but the good thing is sleeq’s extremely local touch (sleeq has listed tons of pubs, restaurants etc. in the city where I live and in many other cities). I don’t care if Bruce is skiing in Switzerland or Donny is looking for blondes somewhere in Sweden. No, when I come home tired from work I want to see if anyone of my friends is having a beer at the pub ten minutes from here or if someone is up to something that I can join. There’s also a calendar function to plan stuff in advance, like meeting up to play soccer or plan other events (I just saw that I’ll be having a couple of beers on Saturday ).

Anyhow, it’s kind of addictive to “sleeq in” and to see where my friends are, either online or via text messages to my cell. And also, on Sunday (after those beers) it will be comforting to see that most of my friends are sleeqed in as “tired at home”, feeling just as crappy as I do

Regards,
Mike (a.k.a Schwede at sleeq)

P.S. There is also a “flirt alarm”, which somehow alerts me if that hot “sleeqer” has sleeqed in close to where I am – but I guess I should ask the Mrs. before I try that one…