Germany is starting to build a name for itself as the startup cloning capital of the world. German clones of popular U.S. services keep popping up. Twitter (Frazr, Dukudu). and Facebook (Studi.vz) are two recent examples. TechCrunch contributor Gregor Hochmuth termed these German clones Copy/Paste innovation.
The latest German clone, Verwandt, means “related” in English. Its design and functionality is very similar to its U.S. counterpart, Geni. In fact it goes well beyond similar – Verwandt is a Geni clone dressed up in some cuddlier graphics. It uses the same layout and quick sign-up flash-based registration form as the U.S. site. They’ve also copied the family tree navigation and profile pages. Take a look below to judge the similarities for yourself.
The motivation and business process is clear: 1) Find a proven concept in the U.S. or elsewhere, 2) Clone the service, 3) Profit. And they have been profiting off these clones quite a bit. The Samwer Brothers have invested in Alando.de (eBay clone sold to eBay) and Studi.vz (Facebook clone sold for $100 million). They’re also investors in Frazr. See Gregor’s post for a longer list of clones. Certainly other countries, including the U.S., engage in their fair share of cloning as well. However, the flood of clones coming from Germany suggests an unwelcome trend.
Verwandt seems to be cloning some of Geni’s success as well. They have over 1.5 million profiles in under 2 months of operation, compared to Geni’s 5 million. They’ve also secured an undisclosed level of financing, most certainly helped by Geni’s $100 million valuation.
There’s a lot of great innovation going on outside the U.S., but this rip and flip mentality may prove short-sighted as the real McCoys continue to innovate and internationalize, and solid German startups like Xing are forgotten in the controversy.
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.
It is one of the big missed opportunities of America and the tech industry in general. As much as most Americans want to think that they are global players, our field of view is so narrow that we cannot see anything beyond our borders.
That is not saying anything about the reprehensible activity in Germany, of stealing other people’s ideas and business models. All these German companies should get sued and absorbed. Otherwise, why doesn’t some startup just start making DMW B Series and Mercedes 3 Class and 2LK or YW Bassats and Lettas….. steal the plans and slap a different color and logo on them.
What Germany is doing and allowing and what the US industry is not considering in their strategies and not fighting, stifles innovation and progress.
Ultimately, the clones will not survive because they are based on a stolen platform that was not the result of great minds coming together and built in a language that is limited in scope.
I hope they have coming to them what they deserve, failure and ruin.
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)
Sven,
You are right, Verwandt.de is not a clone, it’s intellectual theft. There is a difference between taking cues from something and stealing someone else’s idea and changing the color.
FTI…. stealing is not Innovation, you idiot!
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...neuer-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.