
Ask HN: Is making clones bad? - SingAlong
Just a few hours ago, a friend sent me a message that he was planning to make spanish or french clone of a famous site. He said there was a market for this since this kinda site didn't exist in French or Spanish.<p>I suggested to him that he shouldn't make a clone of some idea UNLESS he's going to OFFER something BETTER (if it does something better I wouldn't call it a 'clone').<p>Am I right in saying so? Or is there anything I'm missing?
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wesley
Err, localizing the site is already offering something better. I'd say go for
it. Are you suggesting non-english people simply shouldn't have access to such
a site because it already exists in english and the company chose not to build
a localized version?

There's a huge market there ripe for the picking and many American companies
aren't taking notice.

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modoc
While you're offering something better, you're not offering a new actual
feature or function, just a swap of the text. It's like adding an 'S' to
someone else's big word in Scrabble. Yes, you get the points, but it's not
nearly as satisfying as laying down your own word. It's a move of last resort:
"I have nothing better I can do".

I'm not saying he shouldn't do it, but if I'm at a gathering and person A says
"I built this new web-app that does cool new thing X" and person B says "I
copied site B, only I changed the text to Spanish", it's pretty clear who I'm
going to want to chat with.

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alex_c
I think it depends what you're after. Building something brand new is more
interesting and challenging, but taking a proven design and introducing it to
an untapped market has a higher probability of resulting in "something people
use", for substantially less effort. So I disagree with the "I have nothing
better I can do" sentiment.

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modoc
Fair enough. It sounds like a smart business move, but a weak "hacker" move.

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davidw
Someone once said this:

> That's the essence of a startup: having brilliant people do work that's
> beneath them.... Think Einstein designing refrigerators.

The idea being that once you've made your pile, you can go on to do more
interesting things, like novel startup generator startups, or writing your own
toenail clippings and oatmeal language, or whatever else you fancy:-)

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eugenejen
"Bad artists copy. Great artists steal." -- Pablo Picasso.

I think as long as your friend is conscious what Picasso said in the quote
above, it will be ok. Because the clone is just the starting point. There is
market there but no product is available. So by cloning this product, he gets
his foot out of the door and the rest of journey is up to him.

~~~
kingnothing
I've always heard that quote as "Good artists copy; great artists steal."

Any idea which is correct?

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DougBTX
I've heard the "Good" version too. On Google it wins 35,000 against 2,660,
which is closer than I'd expect. The Wikipedia page has it as "Good", but
Unsourced.

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parenthesis
MercadoLibre.com started out as a latin american 'ebay clone'. They seem to be
doing okay (== monopoly in their region); in fact, ebay now own a stake in
them.

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vaksel
he IS offering something better. Does the original site exist in
French/Spanish? No. So he is doing something the original site isn't.

Frankly I don't mind clones at all. Its all about execution...if someone can
clone you and take any marketshare...then you might want to look for another
job

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wheels
I have mixed feelings here. On the one hand, from a market perspective I
think, "Sure, why not. Just exploit the race condition that exists between The
Next Big Thing in the US and those startups recognizing the European market."

On the other hand, as someone that cares about the health of the European
startup scene, it doesn't set a good precedent that successful European
startups tend to far too often just be knock-offs of American companies, and
in fact the cycle feeds itself -- it's such now that European investors often
want to see a "proven model", meaning a knock-off, which makes it harder for
European startups to find funding when doing something riskier.

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owkaye
It's not all "America to Europe" you know ... there are startups in Europe
that are innovating in ways the Americans haven't tried yet. Maybe not many of
them, but my new business is based on one of them and it wasn't that hard to
find.

The European company mine is modeled after is not doing well because they've
made a fatal flaw in their implementation that's preventing their growth, and
it seems their management doesn't recognize this, but other than this simple
issue their business concept is sound, and when they eventually recognize this
issue I'm sure they will do well.

But I'm American and I want to bring the same service to the USA so I'm
proceeding with a slightly modified version -- one that will actually work
well in the USA. I see nothing wrong with this whatsoever, it's a simple task
of bringing a good service to places where the originator cannot or will not.

~~~
wheels
It's not that there aren't ideas coming from Europe to the US; it's rather
that there's not a statistically significant number of American startups that
are knock-offs of European ones. The converse isn't true. That there exist
European copies of American companies doesn't bother me in the least; that
they're probably half of the European startups does.

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ojbyrne
I like to call the strategy "fast following" rather than "cloning." It made
Bill Gates a billionaire.

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code_devil
I think its fine. Look at even the current social networks in English itself.

Dating Sites ---> Friendster --> hi5 --> Facebook --> Orkut

    
    
                                                   --> Bebo
    
                                                   --> WAYN
    
                                                --> LinkedIn
    

They all started with the same base, a database of people that interact.

Again, the App development platform was started by facebook and now everyone
else copied it. So, once you clone it you can always give it your own unique
flavor with time.

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danw
Amazon expanded into Europe by buying up it's 'clones' in other languages, so
this might work out well.

Facebook chose to translate and expand by itself instead of purchasing local
clones.

I guess the difference is amazon was buying shipping and warehousing.

~~~
electromagnetic
Amazon had physical assets it needed to acquire, at best Facebook needs a data
center, however a 'clone' is unlikely to have one worth the money.

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danw
Exactly. Buying a facebook clone would be for the user base.

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sachinag
StudiVZ had an exit - just not to Facebook. There are many exits as long as
you have users.

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danw
I didn't know StudiVZ had made an exit, thanks for pointing that out. To a
publishing company too, very forward thinking.

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mixmax
I actually hacked up a clone of HN because I thought it would be nice with a
hn-like site for "normal" news in Danish and there aren't any. I don't feel
bad about it in any way because it doesn't infringe or subtract from HN since
it's a totally different crowd.

If you want you can check it out here: <http://www.deloghersk.dk> (still has a
few bugs...)

~~~
Raphael
Well, HN is just a clone of Reddit. And Reddit is just an improved Digg. When
someone makes a clone of yours, then you'll know you've hit it big!

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iamelgringo
I think that making clones is a great idea. My current project is making a
reddit clone on top of Django. I'm planning on setting up social news sites
focused on niche markets.

I know that there's already sub-reddits, Digg, etc.. but I'm pretty convinced
that your average person in Peoria/Des Moines/Kansas City isn't going to get
past the first page of reddit or Digg without running away screaming because
of the trolls.

Think about it this way. How many web forums are out there that are devoted to
niche markets? How many magazines are there? How many local newspapers are
there? How many sitcoms are there? How many movies are there? The web is
media.

There's nothing wrong with taking a format or platform, and targeting it at a
niche market. You don't have to reinvent the wheel every time you make a
consumer facing web application.

The problem of "What do people want" has already been solved repeatedly. As
long as you're not infringing on IP, if you can take an idea and focus it on a
specific market, you're one step closer to making money.

~~~
eugenejen
Not a bad idea! But reddit is pretty bad in dealing with trollers in non
programming subreddit.

But I like the newmogul when nickb released it. The feeling is very natural
but each focuses on its own subject.

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rokhayakebe
I can guarantee that the site he will clone is an actual clone of another
site.

Everything you see today is a clone of something else and they simply change
the theme, the message, this or that.

True innovation looks too dumb to be copied.

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mattjaynes
I often find myself wishing for variations of popular sites and services since
often I can find one that does what I want, but fits me better.

For example, when I was recently looking for some good bug-tracking software I
used FogBugz as a trial and really liked it, but they're pricing was really
ridiculous for my use case. They would charge $20 per user per month for
whoever uses the site. That will work great for other folks who have a static
team, but I work with a revolving pool of outsourcers. So for me, it would
cost an extra $20 for a outsourcer of mine to perform a $10 task that month
and use the bug tracking system. Great software, but their pricing model was a
bad fit for me.

So, I started looking at other bug tracking software sites and found some that
I'd never heard of, but that looked promising. I eventually settled on
Unfuddle since it allowed me to have a revolving pool of users and not be
penalized for it in the pricing. I tried Lighthouse and a few others, but
there were slight variations in their functionality that didn't make them an
ideal fit. Of course, those aren't exactly 'clones', but they duplicate
significant portions of functionality and vary in small ways that can be
significant for a user like me (i.e. pricing structure).

So, I'm all for clones - bring 'em on. It keeps the established guys on their
toes and innovating and gives users slight variations to choose from.

It's basically slight genetic variation and natural selection in business.

P.S. The only time it really seems wrong to clone is when the site's text is
copied too closely - or if the visual design is too similar.

P.S.S Also, if the site being cloned is super unique and pushing the realm of
some new functionality, it seems bad form if clones don't at least acknowledge
and give credit to the original site for their inspiration.

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gommm
I think part of the problem with cloning a website is the motivation. Feeling
that you're just cloning a succesful website without adding your own touch is
just not as motivating (at least for me).

I'm a bit in this situation currently since I had an idea for a product that I
really wanted to do, but by the time I quit my job to work on it, someone else
had the same idea and implemented it for the american market... So, I let the
idea by the wayside for a while but recently I decided to implement it for
another market... So in a way I'm cloning someone's website (same base idea)
without cloning since I originally wanted to do exactly such a website...

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swapspace
It depends on what he means by cloning. Speaking from an Indian perspective,
there is a horde of vanilla Indian social networking sites which are just
floundering. On the other hand, there is bazee.com, an ebay equivalent which
was bought by ebay and is now known as ebay.in. There are other startups
similar to US ones in travel, mobile payments and so on, which are doing
pretty well.

I guess it's not just about localization in terms of language but also about
making related offline services available, which is sometimes not feasible for
the original site(s) to do all over the world, at least fast enough.

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visdo
Bad? No. Cloning idea is actually good thing. We need multiple choices. Doing
better is also not a necessary thing. I say doing different.

~~~
mcxx
But only cloning doesn't bring multiple choices. You have to bring innovation
to create a difference.

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joshu
For an exact clone, it's pretty lame. And even worse, because the cloning
process doesn't teach you any of the reasons the product is like that, when
you DO need to diverge, you won't have learned anything.

It used to really upset me as the creator, as well. But then I realized they
don't really have what it takes to be successful, anyway.

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Timothee
I think there is a good market for cloning site.

But I agree with you though, that if it's literally cloning, it's not great...
and some people will notice anyway and that would give you a bad image.

Overall though, I don't think there is anything bad about it. That means you
start with a proven idea. We all know execution will make the difference
anyway.

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known
"Imitation is the sincerest of flattery." --Charles Caleb Colton

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palish
Awe. I thought this would be a philosophical discussion about the merits of
human cloning.

~~~
Raphael
It's so easy to make people naturally that it would be pointless to make more
than a few clones, just to prove it can be done. The same applies to apps. If
you are looking for a programming or design exercise and can't think of
anything original, rewrite an app you like.

~~~
palish
Mm, consider what it would be like to not be forced to wait for a heart
transplant. At that point, you could grow your own.

Of course, that would be quite controversial.

~~~
Raphael
Well, I think it would be less controversial to grow organs in pigs or just on
their own. If you grow an actual human, he will probably want a say in the
matter.

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mtw
it's a good idea as practice. Otherwise, if you or your friend are planning to
make it a major business, don't, because of legal repercussions when it will
be popular

