Cyworld is one of very unique social network services in the world. Before Cyworld, there were a success case, ILoveSchool based on networking school alumni in 1999. So trying of new startup for SNS has been very rare.
Recently there are new startup services for SNS such as LinkNow.kr, Hutory.net and People2.co.kr. I reviewed these in detail, but I couldn’t find unique things compared with abroad SNS services.
The Web 2.0 trend makes a duplication of ideas and innovations too such as a example of Germany. Korea is not except, Me2day and PlayTalk was on debate who copied ideas and concept each other, but they’re also clones of the Twitter style.
Furthermore, I could find similar icons and user interface as if they want to copy them without weight on mind. Linknow is almost clone of early LinkedIn. As one of heavy user of LinkedIn, I’m very inconvenienced for that. Many newspapers remarked its starting because the founder was influential on that area.
Hutory.net is also very similar with Facebook interface. All of collections are shown in one page such as photo, profile, friends, groups and comments simpler than Cyworld. But, it is a clone of Facebook clone in Germany StudiVZ
Someone may say that clone services are rather than no trying. Copying interface and icons is on a charge of the larceny of intellectual property rights.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Korea License.
Trackback
URL: http://koreacrunch.com/archive/clone-sns-sites/trackback/Comments
September 3rd, 2007 at 12:47 am
As you can see, there are a lot of so called “web 2.0 services” with similar icons and even whole designs out there. It’s the trendy web2.0-style, a lot of sites look similar to each other.
January 16th, 2008 at 5:05 am
Hi, not directly related but I thought this article might interest you:
http://searchengineland.com/061215-120817.php
It’s about Naver and Daum’s partnerships with Yahoo and Google for sponsored listings.
February 5th, 2008 at 11:09 am
but featureset and icon theft is not being trendy…its being criminally lazy.
and having worked in the sphere during my time at Freechal….its sad, sad, sad that it seems people inthe industry are risk averse and are complete bandwagon tools.
I could have a field day mocking all of these sites.
Wait. that’s a good idea for a blog.
Leave a comment