ReVou promises “Twitter clone software made affordable” for $399 as a self hosted script. The script offers all of Twitters features, including SMS support, and even comes with its own API. The only question then becomes is why would you want to host your own Twitter? This is what ReVou says:

Existing site owners can benefit from running a micro blogging service resulting in more viral growth for your website when your users interact with follow friends by receiving updates via our social network platform. With our SMS integration as well as custom API, we allow you to gain more revenues through purchase of SMS credits, revenues from web advertisements and as well benefiting from 3rd party applications built for your site using our API.

Naturally I’m a little skeptical but there is a thriving marketplace for Digg style voting sites, with some services (Sphinn comes to mind) doing particularly well in various verticals. Perhaps there’s no reason why Twitter clones might not have some success, be it as stand alone sites or more likely integrated into existing membership based sites.

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According to a company blog post, social news site Reddit has launched, in closed beta, the ability for users to create their own “reddits”.

The new feature will eventually allow all users to create their own social news lists for chosen topics. These customized reddits will come in three flavors: public, restricted, and private. If you set up a public reddit, every Reddit user will be able to view and participate in the reddit. Restricted reddits will only allow certain members to contribute. And private reddits will only be viewable by their own members.

For the next week or so, Reddit will solicit a “handful of users” to try out the new feature before opening it up to everyone. Mixx has implemented something similar, while we’re still waiting for Digg to do the same. As these social news sites become more platform-like, we’ll see them competing with offerings like Fraxi (covered here) and Pligg.

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There are scores of Digg clones already, of course. The most well known is Reddit, which was acquired by Condé Nast a little over a year ago. But there are also emerging platforms that allow anyone to create their own Digg-like site.

We’ve covered these as they launch. Our favorite is coRank, which recently relaunched and has a lot of loyal users.

Pligg is another – it’s a well known open source project that allows people to create Digg-like sites. Pligg was recently put up for sale, but as far as I can tell it was never sold.

Today Pligg announced (buried in a blog post) that the upcoming launch of Fraxi

Soon we will be launching a new service called “Fraxi” which will allow anyone to create their own free Pligg powered niche community with just a few clicks of a mouse button. For example if someone living in Miami wanted to create a social network for the citizens of their community, they will be able to create Miami.Fraxi.com in a matter of seconds. No hosting fees, no installation process and no time wasted. They can then concentrate on growing their social network instead of needing to learn the ropes of FTPing, monkeying with server configurations, setting up domains, etc. More information about this service and website will be unveiled soon.

Not much in the way of details, but the Fraxi site is up with a landing page. See this blog for more editorial.

Digg itself will likely enter this market in 2008, we hear. This could possibly be through an acquisition, although a source tells us this would be for customers, not technology.

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Today VideoSift, which has 1 million monthly unique visitors and claims to be the largest user of Pligg’s software, emailed to tell me they have developed their own software and will stop using Pligg. The new site goes live this Friday, August 25.

VideoSift says their new platform is built exclusively for video aggregation and will serve their needs better than the Pligg software. They were also hesitant, they say, to continue to contribute to the Pligg open source project. They cite a “serious security breach” that compromised part of their database and was based on a simple exploit that shouldn’t have existed. The Pligg community moved quickly to respond and patch the problem, they say, but it left them feeling vulnerable.

The sale of the company put them over the top, and the company says they have some misgivings about the Aferro GPL license, particularly about how code resales are handled.

VideoSift is a loss for Pligg at a crucial time during their sale process. Not only is the site generating more traffic than other Pligg sites, they were named the best video aggregator by PC World late last year. These are the kind of banner partners Pligg needs to get a good sale price.

A screenshot of the new site launching this Friday is below.

Update: After reaching out to us to write this story, the founder of VideoSift is now saying that we mischaracterized his position. Instead of trying to properly characterize his position, here’s his email to us. You decide if the story is inappropriate or not.

Pligg is a good general CMS, but there were a few considerations for moving off:

We started VideoSift shortly after Pligg was ported from the Spanish language Digg clone Meneame.net written by a talented Spanish coder, Ricardo Galli. ( http://meneame.net/) Pligg has gone through a lot of revisions and changes since then – and we haven’t moved with them.

About 2 months ago, there was a serious security breach at VideoSift (and other Pligg based sites) that compromised part of our DB. The breach was based on a simple hack that would have been found by analyzing the Pligg source. Although the Pligg community was quick to respond and patch the problem- This pushed us farther down the road to closed source.

And lastly, although we were well on our way to writing our new software, we have some misgivings about the pending sale of Pligg. Pligg is licensed under the Aferro GPL which is pretty strict about the re-sell of code.

The new VideoSift has been rebuilt from the ground up to work well around video aggregation. Our community loves it, and we can’t wait to launch it this Friday.

Thanks and cheers,

Brian Houston
VideoSift
Sydney, Australia

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Assets included in the sale are the domain name, website and control over the SourceForge account where people can download the current code.

In an email, Pligg says they have 10,000 registered users on the site and the software has been downloaded 60,000 times.

The Pligg community has grown larger than ever expected, with over 10,000 registered users sharing and trading tips, more than 60,000 Sourceforge downloads and 2 IRC rooms that are active 24/7. It’s become an extremely large project and community to manage. We all have day jobs and struggle to find enough time to keep up the pace. We’ve seen many online businesses develop products to support Pligg recently. Selling everything from custom templates and modules, to support and installation. This is a clear example that with the proper team in place, Pligg.com could easily dominate the other markets in this area. Pligg has even created a shop where users could purchase modules, templates and services. This feature hasn’t yet been launched though.

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Among the complaints: SuperGu is claiming ownership to ajax effects, sidebars, login boxes, “read more” links, navigation tabs, the expression “Powered by”, tags, the RSS icon and other common web design elements and layouts.

The overall layout and functionality of your yget template is similar in look and feel to SuperGu’s software. First, the location and shapes of the vote box are substantially similar with only a minor variation of inverting the chevron between the vote option and total vote tabulator, Second, the navigation tabs along the top of your yget template, “Published,” “Unpublished” and “Submit a new story” are identical. Third, the left side vertical menu on SuperGu has only been shifted to the right side. Fourth, the “Search” field is in the same location as SuperGu. Fifth, the “sort” feature located underneath the search field is in the same location as SuperGu despite the utilization of different words to achieve the same meaning to the user. Sixth, the “RSS” button (top right) next to “sort” and underneath “search” is similar to SuperGu’s RSS icon. Seventh, the “Tag” feature is located in identical location as SuperGu’s placed in the storybox beneath “posted by” and above “story description.” Eighth, the “Storybox” is the same location as SuperGu and includes the same features of “comment,” “Add the link to…” (Save), and “Tell a friend” (Email). Ninth, the page numbers at the bottom of the screen are similar to SuperGu’s design, and they function the same as SuperGu. Tenth. the verbiage “Powered by Pligg” is identical to “Powered by SuperGu.” Last, the “sidebar” menus are the same as SuperGu in appearance and method of operation. Within the sidebar menus the registration/login box which looks and operates the same as SuperGu. Furthermore, the Ajax effect applied to all the boxes within the sidebar menu when they open and close is identical. The dialog boxes open/close with a button which operates and looks similar to SuperGu with only the minor variation of placing the down arrow in a circle as opposed to a square. The “read more’ link operates the same and is in the same location as SuperGu’s “more” button, It is thus our opinion that your product is an infringement of our client’s copyrights. Moreover. based upon the sheer number of similarities and reproductions between your yget template and SuperGu it is unlikely that this is the result of serendipity but rather a premeditated effort to duplicate SuperGu’s software design.

Adding to the ridiculousness of the claims: SuperGu founder James Phelps has been caught hiring a developer to build the very template he’s claiming Pligg stole, saying “I am only interested in cloning the ‘Yget’ template found in Pligg here: pligg/templates/yget/.” This is a perfect case for the EFF to get involved in, and I look forward to seeing the obligatory video apology by GuperGu founder James Phelps.

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