So the internet looks like a huge cloning jungle? Ideas blossom here and others replicate them there? Often abroad. TechCrunch covered yesterday a German copycat of Geni and the connection was indeed pretty obvious.
Business2.0 just released in its August edition (print magazine) a list of clones per country of 4 star Web2.0 companies: Digg, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn. There is just one problem, the information is pretty much inaccurate and even wrong. Let’s take France for example. SkyBlog, the largest french social network, is nowhere near FaceBook, and even so it was there much before (would be closer to MySpace maybe). Scoopeo, supposed to be a Digg clone, is not a French company, but a Belgium company (the service is in French though). DailyMotion was created before YouTube: who is cloning who?
Wow, I really like their content most the time. This is some bad research for sure.
Considering what I know about some of those sites, the research clearly sucks big time. Vostu isn’t a Facebook for Mexico (they try to position themselves as a FB for latinos wherever they are) and last I heard the have just a few thousand registered users, clearly not relevant. BuscaTube is a video metasearch site, nothing like YouTube, and InfoJobs might be considered a Monster.com clone, not LinkedIn – just to name a few…
Anyhow… where did we park the “do something that works and make it better?” and change it with the word “clone”?
Is that a 2.0 thingy? Where did I hear that Google is after all an Altavista clone, or that in fact, most of what Google does is cloning other ideas that already existed, right? Hmmm, no, I’ve never heard that anywhere. The moment you become successful, it seems that you’re no longer a clone, if you were ever called that name (hint, the case above with YouTube and Daily Motion where now the site that first launched is considered a clone).
Perhaps this is why Business 2.0 is about to go out of business…
At least for Brazil they’ve nailed it. The fact is that it makes totally sense (at least for me) to have a local “digg-like” clone due to language and cultural differences and specially when it is related to text content like news, but I wouldn’t apply the same model to something like youtube.
Bravo Business 2.0
*slow claps*
I have been an avid reader and subscriber of Business 2.0 since the very early days.. but things started to change with the B2.0 since 2006, the pages got lesser.. but content was still very good. But after receiving and reading the August edition.. I was and disappointed. The articles were just ok and was sparse with not many articles as compared to many issues ago.
Calling rajshri.com as indian clone of youtube borders on being hilarious….you cant even upload a video on rajshri.com
having said that there are tons and tons of youtube clones in india…
On social networking site we have yaari.com and others…
some even copy the UI…wonder when we will see the likes of http://www.Shaadi.com ( matrimonial sites) get copied in US
I thought I was the only one! I unsubscribed B2.0 a while ago…
Even I am making a clone of facebook. Why don’t they list me?
In Romania there are many copycats: there’s http://www.trilulilu.ro/ – a YouTube clone, and also http://www.digg.ro .. a local Digg alternative.
Never heard of most of these services. FB rules!
man, business20 was one of my favorite mags, and before that…’the industry standard’…i sure know how to pick ‘em.
I wonder how they compiled this data. I looked around at Quantcast, Alexa and Compete and none of this data makes any sense.
As you mentioned, most of the research on India is totally wrong. IndianPad.com is by far the biggest digg-like site in that sub-continent and even the other categories look wrong.
Is anyone going to copy edit this post? It’s literally like someone wrote it and published it.
I agree, this article was completely ridiculous. I remember using DailyMotion well before YouTube ever came out. I swear, Business 2.0 has gotten way dumber since they were acquired.
Apart from the inconsistency with the Belgium site, history works in a simple fashion in that the victor writes it. So even though Dailymotion and other sites may have been started before-hand, they have a great incentive to copy at least part of what the market-leader offers, in order to draw customers away from it. So I don’t think “cloning” is really a chronological concept, at least not in this case.
I think it would be more interesting to see whether there are other ‘clones’ that try to corner in on a specific vertical market or some sort of niche. As some of the comments have pointed out, some of the sites listed (and not listed) are not confined to a single country, but rather are targeted at cultures/populations for whom the ‘original’ sites (i.e., Digg, Facebook, etc.) may not have as much appeal. It’s all about context. IMHO, the mass appeal of some of these sites is also a detractor, as they can become diluted.
I love Business 2.0. Been a subscriber for several years, will continue to subscribe, and I treat the arrival of each edition like a kid with candy.
Looks like they got a few things wrong in this article. Certainly never happens in a blog post, eh? All blog posts on your favorite (well staffed, nice ad revenue stream) blog are 100 percent accurate and the best they can be, right? Anyone read the B2.0 article called The Man Who Owns The Internet?
http://money.cn...sion=2007052214
Great stuff, really deep digging on the domain name game. I can pick a hundred other articles like this I’ve cut and saved, or blog posts I’ve bookmarked for future reference. Actually, I’ve never thrown away a magazine edition. I go back and reread them constantly, and enjoy them all over again. No other mag has ever had that effect on me, so count me in as a fan to stay.
mainstreetreporter> Business2.0 could have easily saved some mistakes by simply visiting the homepage of some of the quoted companies. Obviously this was not done
Send in the Clones
Sung to the tune of “Send in the Clowns”
http://www.stly...intheclowns.htm
Isn’t it rich?
Isn’t it queer,
Scoopeo’s in French but -not- French, my dear
Me here on TechCrunch,
You there with a 2.0 but without a clue.
Where are the clones?
Send in the clones…
Just when I’d stopped reading dead trees,
Finally knowing the blog that I wanted was Mike’s,
Making his jabs again with his usual flair,
Sure of his facts,
Business2.0 is nowhere..
Don’t you love farce?
Your fault I fear.
SkyBlog’s no Facebook and been there for years
But where are the clones? There ought to be clones
Well, maybe next year…
“Who is quoting whom?”
Agree. Sloppy. The idea behind the article was solid, but the specific examples picked and the research backing those examples must’ve been farmed out to an intern who is now in hiding. Hopefully they’ll post a correction in the next edition, and reboot their careful button.
My point is that one sloppy article does not change the other 1,232 (just a guestimate, not an accurate represenation) that I’ve enjoyed and benefited from.
I appreciate that Business 2.0 brought the story of copy cat.
Rajesh Shakya
http://www.rajeshshakya.com
may be they might have got $$$ from the publicity of the websites.
Putfile.com & filecabi.net were created almost a year before dailymotion.
Does it _really_ matter?
Ok, there are really bad copycat-sites (in Germany: StudiVZ, Verwandt.de, Frazr). But a lot of these sites aren’t copycat-sites at all. In Germany, there are several other sites that are _called_ copycat-sites, but DAMN – it can’t be a “facebook-clone” if it is a social network for students.
And: There are many things you can’t simply copy. That’s the reason, why a lot of American companies have PROBLEMS entering the European market. There ARE cultural differences. Copying an idea and adopting it to local needs isn’t copying. It’s innovating on existing ideas.
Read this blog by a friend from an Austrian start-up: http://www.qoov....com/blog/?p=20
Yahoo answers Turkish clone is kolaycevap.com
Techcrunch should hire a a team of 10 copyeditors so that way your posts are read and proofed every hour on the hour that it’s published.
They might copy some things but the design is different , they add some their ideas , new funtcions and its just different … not everyone want to use the american sites…
skyrock.com was created WELL before facebook, myspace, etc.
Hey, if a clone takes on an idea, makes it better and is successful all power to them. That’s how we evolve. The wheel was a great idea, but useless until someone attached it to something!
btw, South Africa’s http://www.muti.co.za would be more of a Reddit clone than a Digg.com clone in my opinion.
bulgarian one
http://svejo.net/ – digg like
http://zazzbg.com/ – youtube like
but i prefer them they load times faster and its local community
hey~ here is your wp theme copy site.
http://www.hoogle.kr/
This occurs with Videolog and YouTube in Brazil too. Videolog came before YouTube. Videlolog was launched in 2004.
How 2.0 is a “print” magazine anyway?
Rajshri.com is hilarious..They are a movie house who sell their movies online..That’s it. Dekhona.com or Rediff iShare could have been better YouTube clones..
The Netherlands:
1) Hyves existed before FaceBook and it’s not much like Facebook at all.
2) Skoeps, although a video site also is not much like youtube at all.
@Bas – correct Skoeps is all about news related video clips.
This is what the site says: “Skoeps is the world’s first national news site that consists entirely of eyewitness images. People capture news events with their phones and send the pictures or videos directly to Skoeps.nl. Their images are often unique, and highly sought after by other media.”
So not exactly like YouTube, but more a specific niche (news video clips).
We have worked with Skyrock for a long time, and it is true that Skyrock’s social networking site predates MySpace and Facebook. However, to be fair to Business 2.0, until relatively recently it was called Skyblogs, so maybe they were confused.
I pretty much fed up with this magazine. I’m getting renewal notices for $19.99/year and I can setup a new subscription for only $9.99. What a rip off anyway, especially with this kind of content.
Americans are so xenophobic.
American companies are the defaults and everyone else copied?
Wo. I guess the writers at Biz20 never leave the boarder.
The whole assumption behind the B2 article is flawed: non-US web services are cloning successful US web services. With such a ridiculous and arrogant underlying assumption, it doesn’t even matter whether the research is correct or not (it’s not…).
It would be more interesting to identify the first-comer in each niche, wherever it is located, and draw the path of innovation toward the current market leader.
After all, entrepreneurship is about improving the existing, marshalling resources to make it happen, and marketing the innovation. You can call it cloning, but then what is not cloning?
FACEBOOK A CLONE OF FRIENDSTER
no wonder business 2.0 is about to go under. Still, even though some of the info is wrong, there are clones EVERYWHERE.
It’s like in the Philippines, people in Manila the capital of the Philippines thinks they are center of correct pronunciations and premier beautiful accent, but in reality it’s the opposite.
Business 2.0 Needs more research!
They are also partially off for Germany:
studivz.de admittedly is a 100% clone of facebook (they even called it fakebook internally).
I believe there is a German TV network behind myvideo.de (ProSiebenSat.1)
Xing on the other hand was started around the same time as Linkedin (2000/2001?), so I wouldn’t call it a clone.
And Germany actually had the first social news/online bookmarking service with SiteCharts.com /SiteCharts.de … since 1999!!
(they seem to be currently revamping the site to start a new offering)
Ouriel Ohayon is splitting hairs, even more than the Indian blogger. It must be a slow news month for TechCrunch and its clone, Tech Chakra.
According to your own Crunchbase, Daily Motion (March 2005) came out a month after YouTube (February 2005).
http://www.crun...any/dailymotion
http://www.crun...company/youtube
And while two of the “clones” we list are older, the point is irrelevant. They’re not the global market leaders and have had reason to copy features from the sites that are. Yes, Skyrock could be more accurately described as a MySpace cone, but the way this chart is laid out, there’s no way to make one minor distinction for one site. The same goes for Scoopeo, which may be over the border in Belgium, but which we squeezed into the French column because its biggest audience is in France. We cede one inaccuracy among 39 clones in up-and-comer video portal Rajshri, which does not include video-sharing features like YouTube.
While not everyone agrees with our list, the point of this chart is that when you’re in France, China or Russia and you want to say the equivalent of “Facebook” or “LinkedIn” in the local language, this is the site you talk about. Consider that China alone has dozens of YouTube knockoffs, and we know that people will dispute whether 56.com, ku6.com or Tudou.com is the better version. Ohayon doesn’t seem to be disputing that fact for any of these sites. Nor does he offer better alternatives. Sounds like a classic case of provincial snootiness.
Further to my other post:
digg is the clone since they copied sitecharts.com / sitecharts.de
and linkedin would have been smart to copy xing/openbc which was started around the same time but to this day is one of the best social networks.
What about the israeli metacafe? It existed well before flix
Oh, and they forgot the French facebox. (Even the name is a clone)