You haven’t arrived until your web application has a German clone, it seems. Web innovation in that country too often distills down to “copy/paste innovation.”
And now, Freundfeed, which doesn’t appear to be a joke. Not only is it a ripoff of the FriendFeed name, they also use the same logo. The service hasn’t launched yet, but I’m willing to make an educated guess and say that it will likely rip off the rest of FriendFeed, too.
This guy is either the founder or an investor. Thanks for the tip, Jodi.
Well…. that wasn’t nice of them.
Surely when it launches all they have to do is contact the company hosting it and get it shut down. I presume they have trademarks etc to defend against it.
Wow, I think I’ll quit FriendFeed and join freundefeed when it launches….. Kidding!
Never an EU-based company was covered so quickly on techncrunh though :p
Does a startup like Friendfeed have enough time/money to pursue this?
It’s a shame that cool app get distorted so quickly. And those guys doing Freundefeed are like one song singer and they will disappear quickly. I hope. But again, shame on you Freundefeed - you don’t make me porud at all!
this is a bad joke … please, let it be a joke … it can’t be real.
i’m a german guy but this makes me sad
The logos aren’t the same at all. The gradient art is like totally different, man.
If you sign up, they email you a link of David Hasselhoff singing “Du”.
Lets see if they can beat Friendfeed in hits like Verwande did Geni.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007.....than-geni/
German innovation at work. My god, they make the French look innovative.
Will Freundefeed be joining other companies like Deig, FaceBuch, MeinSpace, SieTube in Silicon Senke?
Instead of being rickrolled you get Hoffhassled.
I begin to doubt that you are trying to cover anything including “German*” with something like research. Makes me sad; I always had a good opinion on TechCrunch. It just took you one day to change that completely. Keep up your prejudices, don’t try to do any research. Life is easy that way.
I really wish you did not give these type of people attention. I guess you are trying to motivate silicon valley to take internationalization more serious with your posts, so that they dont have to compete with these hack jobs.
btw he should use a different german word for feed, because when you pronounce the name freundefeed in German, it just sounds plain retarded. Oh well I am surprised no one has launched:
http://www.meinplatz.de
Oh I see, if HuddleChat clones Campfire, it’s OK. But if a European company clones FriendFeed it’s a ripoff. Nice double standard.
Aw man, we’ll seriously have to reconsider using the Hoff as our dude
Daniel
Soocial.com
@Falk
Falk is there any research needed when one discovers FreundeFeed, which is merely from look a plagia? What kind of research is needed to cover the impression one has on Freundfeed, I’m interested to know: Interviewing the Founder? and asking him why he didn’t come up with the idea and a different logo before?
We have copycats in Poland too. Compare & contrast:
http://mirtesen.ru/
http://bliziutko.pl/
Props to Freundfeed for latching onto this and launching their own version. All you Sillicon Valley people need to grow up; copying your competitors and trying to grab their market share happens in all industries. If only you weren’t so caught up in your “lets change the world and save baby seals by creating a useless social feed aggregator” then moaning when a competitor copies ideas…
Yes a clone. Yes, shame on them. But bold generalizations like “Web innovation in that country too often distills down to “copy/paste innovation” make me really wonder what your deal is.
You appear to be somewhat of a smart guy, so my best guess is that a Euro girlfriend dumped you when you were 16 and never got over it. I think that it is now time to let go.
Again you guys are missing the whole thing here.
This fucking thing has Mister Wong built right into it.
NOBODY has that here.
Check the link.
the journalist don alphonso is the german equivalent to Loren Feldman. On his blog (http://www.blogbar.de) he frequently trashes ripp-offs like this. For example, he has strongly criticized the german facebook-clone “studivz.net”. He would be the ideal person for an interview on this matter.
@youn: the only thing you can see is the use of logos and a sign up button and an email address. That’s not a copycat at all: it’s just nothing, not worth mentioning it. When you would *know* about the german internet users, you’d know that a service like friendfeed is simply not creating any critical mass of users in the german language market. I think it’s either a joke or just burning some cash - nothing worth covering it.
Ohhh … blame on German copycats.
Germans are doing now exactly that what the whole world did with German cars for decades.
Feel honoured! Don’t be offended!
And a good advice for all US start ups who don’t want to be copied: stay in the deep web
#s 8 & 9 almost made coffee exit my nose. Wonder if that would have a Neti Pot effect?
evil, evil, evil but that is competition
shame on you, Freundfeed :(((
@Falk
I agree if you consider the users, but just the act of mentioning it does not hurt. That piece of information on techcrunch should be welcomd in the sense that it even raised attention in Vanuatu. And to someone talking about German cars, how did you guys react when the smart was copied in China? Did you clap your hands and say, “Welcome Globalization, Global Village here we are”?
They are not competing in the same market so it does not really matter .
They site is in German too .
What a bunch of untalented jackasses, I hope they shut them down immediately after they launch.
@youn
Oh, you really want to enter that discussion?
1) Isn’t there a difference between copying an idea an copying a product?
2) How do “you” guys react when someone copies a products one2one?
@26 & 29 , i agree with you guy.
Nat
http://www.workersinc.com
Ich kann ja nicht glauben!
I can’t belive germy’s (what i call’em) did it again! I liked germany but didn’t like the copy style of them…yet its not just germany doing this I mean lets not profile people here. usa , africa, asia, europe it’s all sh** copy paste one from another…when it comes to cars usa copy’s germans when it comes to webdesign and software euro copys and so on and on …
I would say they dont have chances to be as friendfeed but yet its nice to provide same service to germans….see if friendfeed would be a bit smarter and ask translators like my self to translate their website in 5 different languages I bet there wouldn’t be any competition from different countries… so next time “get some more business college degree”
Take a look at the german start-up fabidoo, which demonstrates that not all german web companies are copy-cats but might come up with truly innovative ideas by themselves.
Cheers
marc
but you obviously like the 20th copy of any mountain view venture much more, than something really innovative you had to understand first.
Copy paste ‘innovation’ is so web 1.0. Reminds me of Finland’s biggest portal, which is Jippii.fi (yahoo in Finnish).
@ U
2) How do “you” guys react when someone copies a products one2one?
… Well I would react the same way dude! Idea is idea be it the idea of the rich or of the poor and where criticsm is needed one needs to make it!
it’s not like most sites are usually in a hurry to offer German versions, so Germans do the efficient thing - they copy into their own language. It’ll be a problem when (if?) the original ever gets around to doing a german version or if the clone does an english version (ie itsourtree vs. geni from verwandt.de).
@ youn
I often read that (especially engineering) companies don’t disclose their knowledge anymore as patents to keep their secret source. If an company has this secret source: good for them! Especially GOOGLE is a good example how you can become VERY big with a secret source.
If you don’t have a secret source you must be quick and inovative … that are the rules coming with predatory capitalism (invented by whom?).
And please don’t plead for software patents. Because that would be the death of all innovative, young start ups. The European Union will hopefully prohibit this!
Since when do you care about copyrights?
@U
I agree on software patents, but my discussion was more on innovativeness froma cultural point of view which can be double sided. I am aware that the fact of having Freundfeed is an innovation in the german cultural landscape but still I think, the “aura” as the great “Adorno” puts it must be there, or?
So it’s not China alone about all these issues all day long…
i cant believe it… its so fucking embarassing. im german and believe me, we have lots of cool startup. but this is soo ******
yh, right philipp, like starting a weak social network, inspired by myspace … you’re so last year dude
Having spent years designing unique products (in Europe) that were ripped off by the entire world not least the Yanks, my perspective is somewhat distorted. Despite patents etc, there is little (no sensible) legal redress. At it’s core memes etc. will be copied, that is how evolution (nature) works. Do I like it? Sure we can all play that game right. I’ve learned to embrace it.
@random: like bloomstreet, joinr and unddu? yea, you are right, its the same bosh. or verwandt.de and the other clones. i really want to see some innovatic startups from germany, not just copycats… its sad, that we have nothing to offer except copycats.
Mister Wong.
Social bookmarking.
http://berlin.unlike.com is an evolution of which site exactly?
oops http://berlin.unlike.net/
I have to say comment #18 by “European” is just ucking hilarious !