

Is That Pinterest? Nope, No It’s Not - andrewdumont
http://andrewdumont.me/post/15813416151/pinterest-clone-pinspire

======
DanielN
So it would seem that the outrage of the author is misplaced. The emphasis is
put on the fact that the sites are being cloned, but that is not where the
value lies. The value is in gaining traction in international markets. This
practice seems perfectly legitimate to me. The straw man in this article is
developed from the belief that the raw value of a startup comes only from the
software.

~~~
GBKS
They don't only clone, they also spam Pinterest with fake accounts. Those
accounts post lots of comments linking back to Pinspire. So it's definitely
not clean competition.

------
tstyle
There are over 20 clones of pinterests in China, some of which have already
raised multi-million dollar rounds:

<http://huaban.com/> <http://www.mishang.com/>

~~~
josscrowcroft
I don't see why this was downvoted - of interest to the discussion and has
relevant links

And it's pretty interesting that we notice the 'Western' clones of businesses
but not necessarily the Asian clones (which have a potential impact/reach
orders of magnitude higher)

------
atomical
A lot of hackers won't develop a product unless it is a brand new concept that
has never been marketed before. These guys actually do their research and
compete with companies that are trying to do a land grab. I can see the draw
of innovating and creating something new but I can also see the draw of
finding a business model and making money. It's not wrong in the least.

~~~
gerggerg
Except they're clearly trying to profit off of customer confusion. It's one
thing to copy a business model, it's another thing to copy a company.

~~~
joshAg
but didn't the article say that the brothers launched in markets that the
original had yet to enter?

~~~
storborg
It's not like they're setting up brick and mortar stores. Pinterest is just as
available in Germany as it is in the US.

~~~
deleo
Not true, they're playing hard to get. They're not open for everybody,
although, sure, the limit isn't geographical

------
mojuba
It would be ironic if the clone was less buggy than the original in this case.

My experience with Pinterest was so frustrating. At times it seemed there were
more bugs than working features. Beta? Sure, you don't have to check if, e.g.
the notification board - the main "social" feature of your web site - works at
all if you are in beta. And sure, you don't have to respond to suggestions and
bug reports from your users.

On top of the myriad of glitches I discovered while using it, I eventually
deleted my account at Pinterest, only to discover a few months later, that my
boards still exist, people repin stuff and I receive notifications by email,
even though my profile and the possibility to switch notifications off don't
exist anymore.

Never seen a web service so beautifully designed and so terribly buggy at the
same time.

Dear startups, can you please hire competent developers who feel responsible
for what they roll out to the production servers?

~~~
Smudge
The biggest issues I ran into (when creating a pinboard of graphic Tee designs
I like) were likely due to poorly-handled replication. I'd create a pin, and
it would redirect me to a page that would immediately 404. If I refreshed, it
would sometimes render the thing I posted, and sometimes 404. Furthermore, any
changes I made to pins would come and go, and I'd have to resubmit the form
several times before it would persist. This wasn't fixed over the course of
the _several weeks_ during which I added pins.

It's a real tribute to the __wonderfully __crisp design that I actually stuck
around to deal with all of that crap. Honestly, if it weren't for the design,
I would have rolled my own shitty clone using some Rails bootstraps and the
paperclip gem. (I just wanted to show my friends some graphic tee designs!)

~~~
mojuba
I think most issues come from some kind of server-side caching. I guess they
fell for one of the NoSQL buzzwords and they really didn't get it.

------
zzzmarcus
Obviously a startup doesn't want to be copied this way, but if the company
making the clones is actually good at getting users internationally, could
this end up being a net win for the original company? The clone gets popular
in other countries, then gets bought by the original who gets immediate
presence in other markets in return. Seems like in at least some circumstances
it could work out. Maybe?

~~~
jwallaceparker
>> could this end up being a net win for the original company?

Yes. Obviously the original companies consider it a net win, otherwise they
wouldn't buy the clone.

They value the clone more than the money they're paying for it.

~~~
pg
That doesn't make it a net win. The fact that, given that the clone exists,
they prefer buying it to not buying it doesn't mean they prefer the clone
existing to it not existing.

~~~
bermanoid
Would you argue that a company should _ever_ consider the fact that other
companies might prefer them not to exist when they're thinking about what
market to target and how to target it, though?

I'm fine with being negative on the approach of literally stealing the details
of all that the incumbent does, but as a rule, I don't think that it's really
a problem if an acquirer wishes the acquiree didn't exist at all, isn't that
the reason for a large number of acquisitions?

------
tnuc
And Google copied the search engine from many others before it.

Ebay wasn't the first Auction site. Amazon wasn't the first site to sell
books. etc. etc.

So Andrew Dumont, let me get something straight.

It's not alright for sites to copy ideas but it is perfectly alright for you
to copy images/tables from the economist, put them on your site/blog and pass
them off as your own?

Link to original economist article; <http://www.economist.com/node/21525394>

~~~
wpietri
Google didn't copy the search engine. They reinvented it. Amazon didn't copy
the businesses and websites of other booksellers. They came up with a whole
new approach.

~~~
tnuc
<http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/facetious>

------
jwallaceparker
>> Shit like this should be illegal, but it’s not.

This is competition.

It may make things tougher for the original company, but free competition in a
marketplace is always good for the consumer.

If you made this illegal, you're just going to create monopolies where there
weren't monopolies beforehand.

~~~
HeyImAlex
I would never want the IDEA of pinterest to be protected, but pinspire's name,
branding and service are so strikingly similar that it will undoubtedly cause
confusion among potential customers. That should be illegal, and I imagine
that it already is to some degree; I know for a fact that if I started coka
cola soda company tomorrow I would probably have a cease and desist letter on
my doorstep the very next day. I don't know the law but there has to be some
recourse in cases as extreme as this...

------
plainOldText
It must be horrible to see someone else ripping off your work like that. I
mean Pinspire is almost identical to Pinterest. The question is what do you
do? do you ignore them and try to focus on your product without letting anger
affect your creativity and the initial flow of ideas or do you try to compete
with them?

~~~
pg
I think you've put your finger on it: the biggest danger of people copying you
is not the competition, but that anger at them will distract you.

As competitors they're not as dangerous as they seem. Copying someone can tell
you what to do, but it can't tell you why you're doing it, and you're probably
not going to do something well if you don't know why you're doing it.

------
deleo
If Pinterest wouldn't be so slow (like most US startups) to open up to the
whole world. I signed up a few months ago and still haven't got my access.

This wouldn't solve the problem but for sure the effectiveness of these German
guys "creations" would be reduced.

------
BenS
pg is right to say you shouldn't let clones be a big distraction. This is
especially true for Pinterest because we're a small team and we have a lot of
work to do. We're trying to build something important that makes life better
for lots of people. If you want to help us, you should write to me.

Lots of people on this thread say that clones are inevitable and profitable.
That might be true, but at least for me, it would be a sad way to spend my
time. I'd hate to tell my kids that I used my best years copying other
peoples' products instead of trying to create new ones.

~~~
jamesbritt
_If you want to help us, you should write to me._

Implement independent user accounts. I got an invite to join Pinterest and
then found that I can only sign up using Twitter (no thank you) or Facebook
(ultra-double no thank you).

Pinspire will let me create a Pinspire account, so right off the bat they are
more useful to me. If they offer an Android app I'll be completely sold.

Note to Web apps who think they are fodder for such cloning: You best be
really full-featured out of the gate, otherwise you've given away your lead in
the arms race.

------
tlogan
They say leaders have target on their back.

It sucks but unfortunately if your business is successful and it can be cloned
it will be cloned: there is 5B people in the world and some these 5B will do
it. There will be clones in Russia, in China, in Bulgaria, in Germany,
everywhere: depending on how hard it is to replicate/clone.

Unfortunately, it is relatively easy to clone the software part of
<http://pinterest.com/> so that will be cloned.

------
fsniper
I do not know about other sites on the list, but cember.net was not a clone.
It was the sole player of business network in the time in Turkey. It gained
real traction here and It's owners were out of ideas or out of interest of
making money by running it. Then they have sold it for good money to Xing. If
they haven't I believe they would burn out. And then cember.net "merged into"
Xing and business networking in Turkey demolished.

------
onli
Dont forget the history of that. In Germany, many US-Startups don't work. US-
Startups often are damn US-centric. Many won't even allow registration from
other countries (google music, netflix). Others have or had no german
interface (Facebook got one 2008, before that was a big hurdle for a social
network targeting not only young and educated people). I remember predictify,
it had a large section of predictions of US-politics, but no area for politics
of other countries (and so no such questions). Heck, Youtube is almost
unusable here because it gets censored and Google don't seem to care (imagine
that in the US-market).

In all those cases and in many more, you will find imitations of these sites
as the service isn't accessible here (at least not as good as possible). That
is surely a foundation of that copy-culture.

Those copycats are clearly an annoyance. But even such a clone of an
unrestricted site can serve it's purpose: Target a specific market (someone
pointed out that a difference between those sites are the amount of pictures
of woman, which could be caused by cultural difference - USA censors sex,
Germany censors violence).

------
wisty
But you guys are ALL missing the real story. The real story is that while the
user photos on Pinterest are a mash of guys, cartoons, couples, baby photos,
and a couple of hot girls, 90% of Pinspire's user photos are hot girls.

I wonder why? I think the secret sauce that really makes these cloners zoom
involves astro-turfing.

------
webjournalist
Anyone else see the irony in the post? At the bottom of the post, it discloses
that the source of this news is @RWW (rww.to/yPPAj9) ... who is going to get
the Hacker News traffic? The original creator of this news or the one that...
re-blogged it. Just sayin'

------
nextparadigms
People live in a fantasy world if they think you can build something and you
won't be copied - regardless if laws exist against it or not. It's just the
nature of the business, and it has always been like that. The only solution is
to be the one that truly understands his customers, leads the market, and is
always one step ahead of his competition, and you will be rewarded for it.

Every single competitor in every single industry is more or less a clone of
the "originator" (which probably based his product on something else, too) and
then they "copy" each other's features.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wq5D43qAsVg>

------
sbarre
So this is sort of like someone marketing your idea internationally without
your blessing, and then coming to see you once they have traction and saying
"hey you can spend money and do this yourself, and go up against us, or you
can spend money to buy up what we've done and benefit from our experience and
traction and hit the ground running"..

I see the downside, being forced into making a deal that maybe isn't on your
terms, but if the price is right (versus doing it yourself -
internationalization isn't that obvious) then I wonder if some companies just
do it gladly (the acquisition)..

------
LeonidBugaev
Here is another Russian clone Pinme.ru, and it's already funded by $1,3m :)

~~~
gerggerg
Wow. That Russian one is even using assets scraped directly from the pinterest
site.

------
helipad
The Samwer Brothers seemed to have made a fortune from "go away" money. I
don't think they ever really have an intention of running these sites for a
time.

------
foxit
I have no experience with any of the rest of their ripoff sites, but Wimdu
sucks. I mean, hard. Read just their front page copy, never mind digging
deeper.

We got calls from idiots perpetually asking us to sign up with them - through
many, many requests to knock it off. It's the phone equivalent of the spam
Airbnb got pinned on last year. The especially stupid part was that we already
were.

------
wyclif
Andrew, you mean conscience, not "conscious."

------
artursapek
_Hot startups, beware._

Of what though? I think this is a natural phenomenon that will happen in any
competitive environment. The guys doing it are scumbags, but there's nothing
to beware because there's nothing you can do to prevent it.

------
capkutay
Could a start-up avoid this by making an international presence a higher
priority?

~~~
notatoad
is pinterest really localized at all? i get how something like airBnB merits
an international clone, but how does an international version of pinterest do
anything that regular pinterest doesn't?

~~~
herval
You'd be surprised by the number of people out there that don't speak or read
english at all (and I mean it - not a single word)...

~~~
notatoad
pinspire is still english-only though.

~~~
herval
and it's not focused on countries where the majority of population doesn't use
english sites (Latam, some in asia)...

I wasn't comparing pinspire to pinterest in any way, btw

------
mavelikara
Never heard of Pinterest before, so had to Google for it. Andrew your
sympathies clearly lie with Pinterest, so you might want to provide a link to
it to (instead of Pinspire, which you have helpfully linked to).

------
brackin
I'd agree this is terrible but also say I've seen Silicon Valley startups look
at a hot web property in Asia or Europe and clone it, raise a lot of money and
take credit for it a number of times.

~~~
spobin
That's interesting, can you give any examples?

------
nestlequ1k
Pinterest isn't even publicly available yet. Maybe the fact that someone
cloned them so quickly will make them get off their asses and make it
available to everyone.

~~~
loceng
'Not being public' is an 'exclusivity club' ploy to make new members want to
join and be apart of the fun.. The Winklevoss Brothers' idea of exclusivity
for Harvar / .edu emails helped Facebook similarly with initial growth.

~~~
nestlequ1k
Yep. It's cheap and stupid. Why bother waiting for my pinterest invite when I
can sign up for pinspire right now?

Given that network effects are most important for a startup like this, it's
quite possible that the clone can overtake the original in a short amount of
time.

------
Tichy
Why do the originals buy them, though? I think at least for ebay it was a
complete fail (exaggerated user counts), not sure about the others.

------
code_duck
Little wonder, people see companies like Zynga, Microsoft and Facebook copy
with wild abandon and be rewarded richly.

------
joseph_purell
Just stumbled onto a Codecademy like clone called

Codepupil.com.

Wonder if these brothers are behind it?

------
mirrorheed
<http://umbu.com> Similar concept but not a clone.

------
nyrb
is <http://www.pinspire.com/> down? "The service is temporarily unavailable.
Please try again later."

~~~
jamesbritt
It's back up.

------
olivierg
pinblr.com is an exact clone as well.

------
drivebyacct2
I'm sympathetic, but I can't say I agree with this:

"Shit like this should be illegal, but it’s not."

Especially given the SOPA/PIPA/IP discussions that have occurred here in just
the last 24 hours.

~~~
andrewdumont
You're right, edited. Fuck SOPA/PIPA and internet regulation.

------
kenrik
I agree it "sucks" however I do not agree it should be "illegal" We would just
end up with SOPA 2.0

Seriously can you imagine the chilling effect it would have if it were made
illegal?

Facebook would never have made it under that kind of law because they would
have claimed it was a knockoff of Myspace/friendster/hi5/ "insert social
network here".

