Bursting bubbles?
February 3rd, 2007We’ve had a few individuals over the past 12 months that have come to us requesting proposals to build knock-offs of sites like, YouTube.com, MySpace.com, eBay.com, Google.com, YellowPages.com, etc.
I’m not sure exactly what drives people to want to make exact duplicates of sites such as those mentioned above. Perhaps they believe that one day they too will be offered $580 million for their site?
However, this is a perfect example of a business ethics issue. Pretend for a moment that this person does have a large budget to create a duplicate of an existing site … what do you do? I actually take the time to discuss all the details of the project. Is there a major componant that will differentiate the site from it’s competitors? Some twist or spin that might actually enable it to work? Unfortunately, I haven’t come across this yet. At best, someone will take major components from existing sites and try to meld them into one. This might work, however, the cost of actually creating the site is usually prohibitive.
Personally, I believe honesty is the best policy and I try to explain why it may not be feasible in a logical manner. First, I reiterate that it is our company policy that we do not “copy” other websites - general functionality is one thing, but cloning is something else. Next I discuss how large sums of money were put into creating sites like YouTube.com, and there are a multitude of other factors to consider (how will you host this site, how will you get people to sign up for the site, etc.). Sites like YouTube.com and MySpace.com did not advertise - they were the pioneers who road at the crest of the viral marketing wave, but how would a knock-off site compete in the market place? Those sites are free to use (making money off of advertising on the site) and work because millions of people have signed up.
Do I think it isn’t possible to come up with the “next hot website”? Of course not. But the next hot website is not going to be a clone of an existing website. And even sites like eBay.com started small and grew over time. But I personally don’t feel it’s ethical to take on a clone job (even if the budget is there).