There are a lot of Twitter clones out there, often built by companies outside the US trying to steal the company’s thunder by creating local communities with a translated application, something the San Francisco startup has focused little on so far. That this isn’t always a direct road to success, proved German Twitter clone Duduku last year when it put itself for sale on eBay. Not that being inspired is necessarily a bad thing.
In the case of Yammer and Present.ly, it’s about taking Twitter’s core functionality and doing something with it that benefits teams in a business environment rather than individuals. There are other examples of clones that take the concept of sharing short messages with other people and do something fresh with it, like Gospelr (yup, for Christians), Blip.fm (for music lovers) or – why not – catering those interested in adult content (Twatr). There are also projects like Identi.ca taking a decentralized approach to the Twitter concept, and even stuff like Twingr or Revou which let you build / host your own Twitter communities.
What I have much less respect for is services like Koornk (yes, that really is spelled correctly) that clone everything about Twitter without adding anything of value nor approaching the concept from a novel business perspective. In fact, what’s even worse about Koornk (again, yes that’s really the name) is that they steal so much of Twitter’s lay-out and wording that it’s not even fun anymore. From the typical bird logo to the color scheme, the icons and even the font, the whole thing just screams Twitter to me. I’ll save you the trouble of signing up for the service and add some screenshots below so you can judge for yourself.
Although why not mention of Rejaw?
Yes, there are so many rip-offs left unmentioned still, sorry I didn’t look up all of them.
YouTube blatantly ripped off FreeVideoBlog, sometimes imitation is a direct road to success.
They will also need to have a very strong backend infrastructure to sustain heavy traffic if they want to compete with twitter.
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http://www.inkampus.com
Sorry for the late reply, I was going to say that
“boy it sucks to get ripped off, however Twitter doesn’t need to worry since it has a worth of $20m.”
Then was going to point out that a site that I was working for also got ripped off, lo and behold its the site just above my comment, what are the chances, lol.
TC found their next facebook – Twitter. Time for the 3-4 posts per day on twitter.
You know what they say, imitation is the highest form of …
Koornk isn’t even that
This is a great example of the importance of a company’s name. M&A would look at that name and be annoyed. I’ve seen it happen. It’s hard to say, and especially spell – and is probably a pain in the ass for SEO. Not to be mean, but this is a big issue next to user interface that people talk about. Do not make up names that have weird spelling, are difficult to type, etc. Even if they’re nostalgic from your grandma or whatever. Seriously.
It’s actually a Slovene term (company’s based in Slovenia), but still a bad name IMO
It’s a mangled slovenian word for a chicken coop. It’s absurd
I’m sure there are some Slovenian businesspeople who are clueless enough to not have heard of Twitter yet still want to invest money in a Twitter story. That’s all that matters: as long as the racket can pull in money, who copies who and who adds value to otherguy doesn’t matter a whit.
For many people in CEE English is still a barrier. Therefore rip-off versions of well-known services have guaranteed success here.
Even in the Czech Republic, we have a couple of imitations Twitter: DRBZ.cz (gossip) or Tejdu.cz (Now I go to), for example.
Twitter should do something for localization.
How does dailypatricia help in SEO?
@Patricia – I don’t think thats very true. Working in SW M&A, I could give you a list of 50 candidates with terrible names, acquired by outstanding companies – at excellent multiples. These poorly named companies are generally integrated into the parent, so the name is usually of little importance. In the case of social networks… through the eyes of M&A… User-Base will completely drown-out a crappy name.
I’m not totally sure why TechCrunch has decided to pick on these guys… I’m an American living in Europe; working with Eastern European companies on a daily basis… and cloning/localizing/mimicking is a very standard practice that OFTEN leads to terrific acquisitions.
I hope they fail fast:
1) For being nothing but a rip off
2) For having the worst name ever.
FAIL
LOL.
Their name’s even more stupid than mine! They should at least get credit for that…
How about the German ripoff of Facebook? http://www.studivz.net/
I tried to look up a random username (assuming the same structure as twitter.com/someuser) and it gave me this error:
“Were you just making up names of files or what? I mean, I’ve seen some pretend file names in my day, but come on! It’s like you’re not even trying.”
Hmm. Speaking of NOT EVEN TRYING… nice rip off of Twitter guys! Lame.
I can’t wait to start koornking.
I see one thing I don’t think Twitter supports: OpenID support
@Ben – If you think the German facebook ripoff is bad, you should see the Chinese version, Xiaonei… same color scheme, buttons and everything. http://www.xiaonei.com/
What about a “Worst Startup of the Year Award”? This one will win it for sure!
i dont see it as bad they are clones just like the rest at least they had the decency to copy it 100% unlike the rest
puahahaha. fail.
I don’t understand the point of this; especially for an online community that can only thrive by having the lions share of users.
Just for info:
First, Koornk started as localized version of Twitter.
Second, some koornk users have also account on twitter and microblog on them both
So koornk is (was) not meant to replace twitter but to complement it.
Third, name koornk comes from Slovene word kurnik, which means hen house. What so special about hen house? Well, if you take a look at the map of Slovenia , you can see it resembles hen. Now koornk doesn’t seem such a bad choice for the name after all, what do you reckon?
And that “bird” is acctually a hen. We don’t twitt, we send “kokodajs” 
Every time we call out a service to clone another, someone steps in and states that it’s ‘complementary, not a replacement’. It’s BS, and you know it.
It’s a poorly-named copy. Period.
It’s not BS … chicken shit maybe
Btw. Koornk developers don’t want to take over the world 
They’re just offering Slovenian interface to less than 2 million of Slovene gals and dudes. If someone else is using it, okay. If not, okay too 
I like its name. Period, comma or whatever punctuation mark you may like
Not that I’m trying to defend anyone, but what part of ‘localized version of twitter’ you don’t understand? I’m sure someone out there will be able to explain things to you a bit more in detail.
And since twitter is not available in language that people here speak, you decide to call some local service ‘poorly-named copy’?
Service by itself it might be a copy, but it surely isn’t poorly named.
You’re making fun out of a joke in foreign language you don’t understand. Not a good idea.
‘localized version’ and ‘Slovenian interface’ sound nice, but I signed up for the service in English, and there was nothing even remotely Slovenian about the wording. So please stop the ‘foreign language benefit’ talk, it’s not relevant in this case.
Yeah! Our talented developers push their efforts to their limits and came up with this wonderful design that is similar to Twitter just by chance. Only for local use of Eastern Europeans that only make jokes…. Also, we love chickens and hens, in many sophisticated ways. So there!
Leave us and our chickens alone!
@Robin Wauters
Koornk authors stated it was complementary to Twitter even before you called it out. You give yourself too much credit.
Koornk is a rip-off, a localized rip-off (because our kurnik is just to small for “you as Americans”" even to deal with us and our language) with some extra features. It’s no secret, they state it right there in the opening post of Koornk blog — you really didn’t uncover anything new.
And you may see English on Koornk, but I see no Slovene on Twitter.
I guess Koornk community should thank you for this free advertisement.
Thank you. Period!?
Oh and btw. I love Twitter too, don’t you? =)
@Robin, you can change the interface language in koornk to Slovene, while on Twitter you can only choose between English and Japanese
Unfortunately, most users from Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina don’t speak or understand Slovene – our languages are not that similar — therefore English seems the best option in this case.
@Ivanovich and Sparkica, please stop using my nickname for your outbursts of sarcasm and cynicism.
@Ivanovich and Sparkica
You suck at geography. Back to school, boy or girl.
@Milan: where did I say I uncovered anything new? And where did I say that I called out Koornk to be a Twitter clone first? Calling Koornk ‘complementary’ to Twitter is a joke in any case.
Hint: Twitter was never about the features, but how many they could cut and still have a kick-ass product with an enormous mass appeal.
Also, get your own facts straight. I’m Belgian, not American. In fact, last time I was in the US I was visiting Disney World as a kid.
@Robin Wauters
Koornk being complementary to Twitter might be a joke to you, but guess what – it’s reality to me and to a lot of other users (mostly Slovenians, but that’s not the point). So much about BS.
I agree with your ‘hint’, but I guess we interpret it differently.
Sorry about the ‘American’ thing. Your comments and unacceptance of ‘foreign language benefit’ lead me to that false conclusion.
It’s really ridiculous, why in the world would someone try to copy a program that is already so successful. Do they really expect others to move from the popular Twitter to its version of Bizzaro Superman in Koornk?
Craig,
perhaprs because Twitter is not available for non-english speaking users? And if they gain certain user base, local or non-local, they will surely attract advertiser or two.
Ok, few words about someone that actually speaks slovene and lives in the same country as Koornk.
The name Koornk is derived from a slovene word kurnik which would translate to chicken coop in english. Hence the chicken in the logo. I think that name was chosen also because of the mocking resemblance between a twitter like community and a chicken coop.
Just to clarify where the name comes from and why it is spelled like it is.
Other than that, I use twitter.
I should refresh before hitting Add Comment.
awesome picture included btw, this surely must be a case for the copyright police :p
This has to be the most amusing post I’ve seen in a while.
To all the sentimes of ‘I hope they fail fast’ : …trust me, copying a business that has no business model with hopes of success is like taking stock tips from the homeless bum on the corner. Completely idiotic.
Now, now… How many Slovenes are necessary to replace a light bulb?
I don;t know…. Seven? Do they have light bulbs?
Let me ask this Polish guy here…
@Frisky
Yes, ask the Polish guy — your praised “Iraq Coalition” partner if I remember correctly. =)
Did somebody, including the author of this article, read the blog on koornk, how this all started?
Here’s the link: http://www.koor...-behind-koornk/
Bellow is the english version and here is the copy & paste:
The story behind koornk.
In an idyllic little country called Slovenia, where the Alps meet the Adriatic sea, web gurus meet for a picnic every year. In the magical geeky atmosphere they never run out of silly wonderful ideas. In June of 2008 they added another attraction to the picnic in the form of an open stand-up speaker’s corner, aptly named Jekyll Park
One of the many fun ideas was a long talked about wish for an application that would resemble Twitter, but would offer localization and other cool new features.
The Challenge
The debate sparked a challenge – who, when and how to build this app, preferably in less than a week. The question wasn’t *if* we need it, it was clear that the challenge was “we want a localized microblogging app”.
There were several geeks from Domenca present at the picnic, among them Matija, who saw this as a personal challenge and a nice little test for our new social networking platform Skyooz, that we’ve been building.
Sixteen hours later…
koornk.com was alive and the first version of the app was active. In 16 hours Matija had programmed, designed and implemented the basic features of a microblogging site onto Skyooz. Truth be told, he spent most of those 16 hours making sure the site worked on Internet Explorer :S (Save the developer!)
So in an extremely short amount of time, we were able to produce a brand new brand and site that featured microblogging. By the way – the name “koornk” comes from Slovenian language and is a geeky way to write the word meaning henhouse – where the chickens just can’t shut their peepholes.
Clucking
Since the name of the app means a henhouse, we call the messages clucking, the sound chickens make
In a month of non-advertised existence of koornk we’ve gathered 700 users, who made us commit to more development and new features. We now put in a couple of hours every week to make koornk your favorite place to cluck. We’ve seen new users from all around the world, who appreciate the cool features of koornk:
- pinging other social websites (like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace etc.) with new clucks (over ping.fm)
- monitoring answers to your clucks and mentions of your name
- easy and handy way to create short URLs for your links
- user search
- fast loading
- OpenID support
- and many other features from our to-do list
Then openness of the development and communication has made it possible to get many new way of clucking. Using the API our users created a Mac Widget, Firefox plugin, Wordpress plugin and other extensions.
Koornk is creating many new ideas and opportunities, so join us and start clucking. If you can, help us with development, we’ll love you for it
A.
IMO, does not really matter what techcrunch thinks, in fact, this article only benefits koornk.
Since almost every popular or big web app first is created in english, I don’t think english speakers know how to appreciate that a great app has been made available in their language. Even if this is a complete clone, Slovenians or whatever the localization is will use it.
And from the comment above, looks like they have implemented a few features of their own as well
Thanks to TechCrunch for advertising.
Koornk is just simmilar to Twitter. Koornk has features that Twitter will never have.
like?
I havent used the service and I dont agree with the blatant copying but if you *can* change the language to Slovene then it IS a local version of Twitter and not just the mindless clone you imply.
Robin, I think you will also agree that your ribbing of the name is somewhat unfortunate in hindsight given that it does actually mean something to the local audience it is meant to serve.
I cannot see Twitter bothering with the Slovene community anytime soon, so congrats to their developers for providing a needed service.
The Internet is becoming a technology of duplicated content, products and services. However I don’t see this as a problem, I see it as a ingredient to success for consumers with competition.
Bring on the clones! The toughest and best will survive!
Good point.
I’ll try one more time: the service is now available in English, which means it opened up to a whole lot of people to whom the word ‘koornk’ doesn’t mean a thing. Re-read the article where I actually said localized versions of Twitter have their value. Koornk stopped being a localized version when it launched and English version.
You can apologize now.
Not sure that point came across in the article – you are contradicting yourself a bit as well. On the one hand you say the name does not appeal to international users and so allow yourself to pettily rib the name and on the other you say because it is in English it is for an international audience.
Both are true in themselves, but the end result is a site used primarily by Slovenians.
@Riaz Kanani
“the end result is a site used primarily by Slovenians” — shamelessly copied from Twitter. The weird thing is that “Slovenians” seem to be proud of the fact…. Are you guys knocking off Gucci bags too?
Keep repeating those words, recycled. Maybe you can convince some ignorant users, but you just can’t keep coming back to us who use Koornk with that argument cuz’ it simply doesn’t stand on solid grounds (if the world was black or white, maybe it would).
A bit too arrogant, don’t you think? Should we really take this debate on that level?
Back in 2005, more than half of Slovenians speak English – I would imagine it is higher today.. maybe adding English was requested by their userbase? I’m sure if we asked they would tell us?
(Source: http://www.ukom...news/2413/2434/)
@Riaz: I’m sure that English version was implemented just to crush twitter and steal all their users… Including myself. :>
@Robin: If you can’t understand the ‘added value’ of English language in Koornk, then you’re beyond help. Koornk is localized ‘twitter service’ and English language is considered as a feature in it.
So, first it was in Slovene, then they added English language and with that they should change the design of web page? Just so that it doesn’t look like a twitter rip-off?
Dude, what are you on? :>
Slovenian weed…. but wait! this is not the ‘real’ thing!!
Why do you write about such companies if you don´t like what they do?
You give them a big platform for promotion.
Slovenia is a very small country. Btw, it is in the shape of hen who live in “koornk”. You should take a map in your hands sometimes.
You can mock our language, but I am proud on slovenian developers.
I am koornk fultime user and I am inviting all 1502000 readers to join us. It’s simple social site. Page is still in development and innovations are beautiful. Support us!
I am Slovenian and I am amuzed
About two years ago( and maybe few months more) digg become a huge success and digg clones were everywhere… specially after pligg made their own open source digg copy..Personally i’ve made 5 sites out of it in Slovenia (it, automotive, sports, video clips and interesting)…. So from my point of view the koornk team isn’t doing anything wrong… I am sure they’ve made the twitter clone for Slovenians first (we have to face the fact out country is so small and that majority of sites don’t bother to translate to slovene) and then, having a solid product, to appeal even more folks… .
btw, I don’t use twitter nor koornk
(Full disclosure: I’m the CEO and co-founder of Domenca, the company behind Koornk.)
Robin, thanks for the mention. We appreciate all publicity, especially the one, that makes us re-think the services we’re putting out. This was absolutely an important wake-up call, that the face we’re showing is not what we’re actually about.
The superficial glance might tell you that Koornk is a blatant Twitter rip-off. This actually doesn’t surprise me, since we started the service just as a pet project by one of our developers, who wanted to see if the social media software platform we worked on actually does it’s job.
The service was created by this one guy, a programmer, who did the set-up, programming, design and HTML coding. In 16 hours.
And that was is – proof of concept.
BUT! It seemed like this was something the web community needed and Koornk started getting more and more users, so we “had to” keep it alive. But this is where the fun started.
Right now Koornk is small, it has just over 3.000 users, but this is much more than the few hundred slovenians that use Twitter.
The response we’ve been getting is that people prefer Koornk over Twitter because it works. It never lags, it’s never offline. And people communicate with each other A LOT! There have been more than 100.000 “twits” in about 4 months. So it serves it’s purpose.
OK, I don’t want to bore anyone. The point is, Domenca is a development company, who wanted to test it’s software. In doing that it created a popular service, which has its user base. The user base is telling us what they want, and we’re providing new features. Koornk is extremely connectible and has many update methods, including Mac widget, Vista gadget, Google Talk bot, Blackberry and iPhone application etc. In many ways it’s much better than Twitter.
But oh shit, it still does look like Twitter, even though they redesigned it in the meantime. But what I care about is that users defend it when TC trashes it and that the massive load of visits we got in the past few hours since this article, didn’t make Koornk even burp or hiccup. The application and the servers were still basically in sleep mode.
So Robin, thanks for the last test, now we know we have a good product
What a douche bag… The point of the post is that it is a copy of Twitter and this idiot goes on to explain how and why they did it, like this makes it right. Moron.
Koornk users are posting with a lot more class than the TC base in my opinion. Robin clearly didn’t reach out before trashing them. Another example of amature hour here at TC.
Twitter shut down Canadian SMS.
http://status.t...ian-sms-service
I don’t blame them.
Hmm.. they have User Search? I’d call that a basic feature that’s missing from Twitter. That plus OpenID support definitely differentiates it from Twitter.
Even Yahoo.pl still redirects to the UK
Valley startups have a huge tendancy to ignore Central, Eastern & Southern Europe
Some Polish examples of lost opportunities (or those grabbed)
Onet
Wirtualna Polska
Gadu Gadu
Nasza Klasa
Polish equivalents of Twitter
corobi.pl
moblo.pl
robisz.pl
beta.blip.pl
Most seem to integrate with SMS and Gadu Gadu
There there is:-
flaker.pl (lifestreaming)
plom.pl (Twitter with groups)
pinger.pl (Owned by O2 and more like Pownce)
I am sure there are more
There are enough exit strategies for many of them to be purchased, either by major portals, or phone companies though Blip.pl is a service of Gadu Gadu, which is already a profitable public company.
Mobile Telecoms in Poland has money to burn
e.g. PolKomTel €106.8m Profit Q3 2008
Back to Koornk
They have realised that their home market is maybe too small, so have multiple localized interfaces.
The project apparently took them 16 hrs, plus they added a few features over the following month
It was a good proof of their development platform
In Europe you will get many more clones because of the patent laws, but out of that melting pot can come innovation, or services that fulfil a need in a timely manner.
A dev team in Slovenia doesn’t need a $500M exit, they would probably be happy with $500K
Lets have a look at the Fragmented Slovenian Mobile market
http://ec.europ...si/index_en.htm
Seem like opportunity to me.
I really don’t get this post. It seems some people still live in a world where ideas can be copyrighted or protected and that’s why you shouldn’t copy them. By the way – Twitter never lost a user to Koornk. And even if they did they obviously don’t care – if they did they would have localized it for other languages.
Imagine if you could write a post like this for everything anybody ever made that was really a blatant rip-off of an existing product (Koornk is a rip-off but has since had its own evolution path, like a fork of an open source project) made for either a local market, a bigger company with a bigger marketing budget or similar? We could have a site called ripcrunch.com with 20 posts / day just for that (by the way, if you rip this idea I want 20% of ad income)…
well they must be attracting some people they are 123,XXX in alexa and a PR5. but i will agree they are one heck of a ripoff and it is a little scary to see it.
This is Business. Twitter created a product, and proved a market. They have been unable to fulfill the need for their product in all the markets it is demanded because of tech/marketing/cultural barriers and probably because Twitter doesn’t care to enter the Eastern European social utility market.
Clones happen because not all successful companies can be everywhere at once. It’s up to entrepreneurs like these guys to fulfill these needs.
Koornk is definitely not eating Twitters lunch, so I don’t know what the complaining is about.
BTW, what is with this ethnocentrism? All of a sudden all words in foreign languages are stupid? “Twitter” is a pretty dam stupid word, and I speak the language. Can’t imagine how lame it sounds to Slovenians or Croatians.
“Clones happen because not all successful companies can be everywhere at once” — No. “Clones happen” because some people are either too lazy or stupid to come up with something original and of value.
The creators of Twitter did… and their company deserves the rewards.
The Slovenian “Koornk” –ers are just wannabes…
What is the Slovenian word for “losers”? –”croakers”? “suckkers”?
And another thing: they pretend to speak English now…
What’s the deal with this Twitter clone. There are thousands of Twitter clones:
Bulgaria: http://edno23.com, Poland: http://pinger.pl/, Romania: http://www.cirip.ro/ , Hungary: http://www.chatter.hu/ , Russia: http://mblogi.qip.ru/, Czech: http://drbz.cz/ , there is even Hip-Hop twitter: http://twitflip.com
Is this a Koornk ad?
@Ivan maybe they didn’t need to come up with something original and of value. Anyway if you read you.go’s & fry’s replies everything is clear. Just because Slovenia is small you don’t have to underestimate it’s inhabitants. We don’t pretend to speak Englihs WE SPEAK ENGLISH and many other languages, you’re just full of yourself.
Let’s not get “violent”. The guys are trying to make a point, pass a sentiment they have.
I can’t help but feel it’s the same sentiment as a couple of years ago, when Google came out and everyone said “WTF, what is this. Just another copy of Altavista.”
Do any of you still even *remember* Altavista.
Maybe today it’s hard to come up with something new, but you can also grow a company by doing something better or just different from the existing competition.
Doing stuff similar to the competition in the begining can also be a strategic move, because you’re trying to steal users, who are used to a certain interface. Then you evolve your interface into a better service.
But this is just theory, not our plans with Koornk. We’re not trying to be the next Twitter… or Google… yet
Google would not have grown as it has if it merely copied Altavista, retard. They actually took the time to creat a *unique* product that internet users had not seen before. All YOU have done is copy a website that real professionals spent considerable time creating. Well done!
Koornk did not just copy twitter, they added stuff of their own that twitter does not have.
real professionals, lol.
CLONES happen because companies do not expand internationally FAST ENOUGH.
DIGG is a great example of its failure to move fast enough in the international environment.
Actually the name is great. If it doesnt sound good to the english speaking crowd, that doesnt mean it doesnt sound good to the rest of the world population.
The rest, no comments.
actually I do have comments: it seems that the rat escaped the domenca lab and became locally successful. Perhaps a bit surprising (although twitter does suck in some fields and people actually do crave for a substitute, especially if its localized) and perhaps a bit too early. And yes, rip off stuff is problematic (and I would always try to stay away from it), but f*ck it. It happened and I believe domenca does not advertise its creativity by it. Hollywood, the Mecca of so called originality, is a rip off business alltogether. And that seems totally acceptable…
I am from Slovenia and would like to add my point to this debate. It is not true, that there are more Koornk than Twitter users in Slovenia, as simple Twitter users search with keywords “Slovenia” or “Ljubljana” will prove. Actually I am myself a Twitter user and part of a very lively local Twitter community. I’ve been invited to test drive Koornk and found it quite nice service.
But.
In a social sense Koornk is very hermetically closed community. My rough estimate would be, that of 3.000 registered users only 200 are actually active. So please, don’t communicate Koornk as some kind of salvation for poor Slovenian internet users who don’t have a place to hang and talk.
I would also like to stress that most Slovenians speak fluent English or at least enough of it to use Twitter and similar social services (as is the case with Facebook). Nevertheless, it’s nice to have one in Slovenian language, too.
And, what you write on Koornk can be posted automatically on twitter, too
Oh right so names like Twitter, Twatr, Yammer, Twingr, Flickr, Revou, Gospelr are not equallyu stupid?
You yanks really need to get a better grasp of the english language.
lol… I cannot stop laughing
I am under the impression this post is a “well” planed publicity stunt
If not pre-planned than it’s not serving its purpose at all
Slovenia, for such a small country, has a lot of potential. So go Domenca, go take over the world with koornk
btw, can anybody explain me the point of twitter? I mean what’s the point of somebody using twitter, what can somebody gain?
If the service is that bad, why do you bother to write about it. This is a good portion of advertising of a bad product.
Before everyone starts getting a little too emotional again: of course copying an idea isn’t *always* bad, and of course creating a localized version of a popular app *can* be successful. And of course Slovenia has potential and great developers to build great stuff (love Zemanta). And of course ‘koornk’ only sounds like a bad name if you internationalize the service (which is what they did). And of course there’s merit in a close-knit, local community. And of course there are more Twitter clones out there. And of course Slovenians are well capable of speaking and understanding English. And of course koornk has features Twitter doesn’t have (which, again, is NOT the point, as it’s easier for copycats to add features than it is to match its success).
Now, back to the point of my post: Koornk is a blatant rip-off of Twitter. Just look at the color of the logo, the fact that there’s a bird (yeah, a hen) involved, the wording, the general lay-out, the same icons for replying and deleting messages, the way followers are presented on a profile page … if this isn’t a rip-off, nothing is.
and there are so many more…
@Robin Wauters
So if they colored they logo red, used let say a cat on the logo instead of the hen (because we could have cats in henshouses?), reshaped the layout and icons and presented followers in a different manner, you wouldn’t say it’s a rip off? C’mon, give me a break.
Your disrespect towards Koornk is — as you said it yourself — based on:
I think we proved you more then enough in our comments (Who knows best about Koornk’s added value? It’s users!) that Koornk compared to Twitter adds value to us.
From this point on your whole story is based on the claim that they’ve internationalized the service when they added english interface to it (is that really all it takes?). So if they’ve kept their service closed in a small local bubble, everything would be fine and Koornk wouldn’t be a blatant rip-off of Twitter?
Buuuuut. They didn’t. They used a bird. And the same interface. So… its a rip-off of the logo and the interface.
And the idea? But who’s counting that.
If it Walks and Quacks like a duck – it’s a duck!
Twitter could sue Koornk.
To those saying “worst Web 2.0 name ever”, Dukudu (the German Twitter clone) is clearly worse. It sounds like a Japanese logic puzzle where you have to defecate in ordered horizontal and vertical lines.
As for the whole “Twitter should localise, Digg already missed out by not going worldwide” stuff, if you don’t make any money then all localisation is going to do is burn your VC money quicker.