Can You Clone Tangler For $1,500?

We’ve praised new hosted forum startup Tangler on a number of occasions – most recently calling it the bleeding edge in new discussion board/forum startups.

Apparently someone else likes it too. Someone in Turkey is willing to pay up to $1,500 to anyone who can “clone Tangler.” But don’t go too far – the listing also states “do not steal tangler.com images and do not violate copyrights. The clone should have the same functions, but the design should look different.”

Two bids have been placed already, one for just $1,000. Of course, building a scalable forum platform that allows syncronous and asyncronous messaging via a javascript interface may require more of an investment than $1,000 or so. But hey, why not try.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen something like this. Someone tried to buy a Techmeme clone for just $500 in 2006, and a fresher listing shows a $300 request for the same thing.

To whoever wins the business – my recommendation is to ask for the money up front, because it’s very unlikely you’re going to have a happy customer when you hand over a week or two of work on your Tangler or TechMeme clone.

Update: See DRM for other cloning projects he found. eBay for $1,500. $1,000 for Digg. Twitter for $1,365.