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Ask HN: Is making clones bad?

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Re: Ask HN: Is making clones bad?

#21

Post by modoc »

alex_c wrote: post #19
modoc wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 buil…

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.

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

Re: Ask HN: Is making clones bad?

#23

Post by electromagnetic »

danw wrote: post #6

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.

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.

Re: Ask HN: Is making clones bad?

#24

Post by modoc »

vaksel wrote: post #20
modoc wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 buil…

yet 5 years later the guy who built "this new web-app" is still floundering trying to compete with the behemoths for attention, while the guy who did a +1 in a foreign market is #1 or #2 in his country, rolling around in millions and waiting to be acquired for a ton of money. Nothing is stopping the guy who did +1 from doing the innovative thing after he makes his millions.

That's a certainly a very polarized guess at the future. It could very easily go the other way, and has for many folks.

Re: Ask HN: Is making clones bad?

#25

Post by danw »

electromagnetic wrote: post #23
danw wrote: post #6

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.

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.

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

Re: Ask HN: Is making clones bad?

#26

Post by 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.

Re: Ask HN: Is making clones bad?

#27

Post by sachinag »

danw wrote: post #25
electromagnetic wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

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

Re: Ask HN: Is making clones bad?

#29

Post by 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.

Re: Ask HN: Is making clones bad?

#30

Post by 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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