Attack of the ping.sg clone
I always believe that plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery. If someone copied from you, it means that he/she felt that your idea is good and worth copying. Its a benchmark that says you've reach a certain status.
I wasn't surprised when I learnt that someone from Vietnam copied ping.sg. Its just a matter of time before someone tried to copy it. In fact, I almost wanted to say "What took you guys so long?".
I know Uzyn wasn't quite happy that someone copied his work. But then, lets face it, in the internet world, copying is everywhere. When a website is successful, someone will try to copy it. Friendster, youtube, myspace, twitter..... they all got their own clones. And I'm happy that ping.sg reach this status.
The only thing sick is that, the copycat has no creativity at all. The entire layout is very similar to ping.sg. Login on the left, most popular on the top and shoutbox on the right. Hello..... at least change the layout abit lah.
But there is one thing about ping.sg that nobody can copy. That is the community. The community in ping.sg is very unique. Everyone is friendly and united. No matter how good you are at copying, there is no way you can create another community as united as ping.sg.
Anyway, thanks to the folks at Vietnam for their compliments. We are greatly honoured.
I wasn't surprised when I learnt that someone from Vietnam copied ping.sg. Its just a matter of time before someone tried to copy it. In fact, I almost wanted to say "What took you guys so long?".
I know Uzyn wasn't quite happy that someone copied his work. But then, lets face it, in the internet world, copying is everywhere. When a website is successful, someone will try to copy it. Friendster, youtube, myspace, twitter..... they all got their own clones. And I'm happy that ping.sg reach this status.
The only thing sick is that, the copycat has no creativity at all. The entire layout is very similar to ping.sg. Login on the left, most popular on the top and shoutbox on the right. Hello..... at least change the layout abit lah.
But there is one thing about ping.sg that nobody can copy. That is the community. The community in ping.sg is very unique. Everyone is friendly and united. No matter how good you are at copying, there is no way you can create another community as united as ping.sg.
Anyway, thanks to the folks at Vietnam for their compliments. We are greatly honoured.
Labels: ping.sg
hehe, it's on a different language, and since these are very much language-based communitise, I don't think they want to intefere with ping.sg or draw ping.sg users to them, let's see how it goes
Posted by Anonymous | 6/02/2007 01:21:00 PM
Well, I wouldn't call them a rip-off or a clone. It's just having the Ping concept in their locale.
Posted by Anonymous | 6/02/2007 04:27:00 PM
If you are refering to the layout, yes they copied. But if you are talking about the concept, then ping.sg is also a local version of weblogs.com or technorati ;)
Posted by Anonymous | 6/02/2007 05:06:00 PM
It is not called copying, it is borrowing idea. Everyone borrow ideas from one or the other. for example, shoutbox, tagbox, searchbox, voting ...etc isn't this exist in other site too ?
Vietnam just want to build a community, and perhaps the fastest way to do something that is workable. Everyone know that ping.sg is built of community and become a brand build of relationship marketing. It is this component that is harder to replicate in vietnam where distance is a problem to build that valuable component.
Geek terminal if successful will even encourage more to build similar clones in Singapore in other loc like orchard etc. Whose know.
Copying/borrowing an idea will always exists if the idea go public. What's more important is that the original work is been appreciated.
Posted by Anonymous | 6/02/2007 06:06:00 PM
Looks like Pings are hot!
Posted by Anonymous | 6/03/2007 12:07:00 AM
This is the highest proportion of early anonymous comments on a post I've ever seen. 4/5 of the last comments were anonymous.
Is everyone suddenly fearing for defamation?
Posted by Unknown | 6/03/2007 02:13:00 AM
Wah.... so many anonymous.
Don't mind I number you all by the order you post the comments lah.
Posted by DK | 6/03/2007 04:01:00 AM
anonymous 1: Of cos we know they are not targetting SG market.
Brennan: I didn't say ripoff hor. But the concept is the same and layout is very similar
Posted by DK | 6/03/2007 04:04:00 AM
anonymous 2: I don't see how ping.sg is considered copying technorati. Technorati is a blog search engine and rank blog by the number of people linking to them.
Weblog list out the recently updated blog entries.
Ping.sg not only list out recently updated blog entries, it also count the number of people who click on it and rank them in the top 10 list.
I didn't see any additional features for blogbanbe. Do you?
Posted by DK | 6/03/2007 04:08:00 AM
anonymous 3: Don't get me started on the meaning of borrowing. Borrowing means you ask permission first. And you got to return it after using.
Copy means copy lah. Don't have to give it a nicer name.
And I didn't say copying is wrong.
Posted by DK | 6/03/2007 04:10:00 AM
anonymous 4: It sure is. :)
uzyn: I'm also surprised by the number of anonymous comments. All the comments are harmless. Don't know why everyone afraid to put down their name.
Oh well.... up to them lah.
Posted by DK | 6/03/2007 04:11:00 AM
With the Internet, copying happens a matter of time. In fact, its very hard to have a site uncopied. I guess copying is the best form of flattery.
No matter what, NO ONE can recreate ping.sg community in which ever locale possible. Its the people that makes up the community.
Posted by Anonymous | 6/03/2007 10:21:00 AM
anonymous 3 say it's borrowing an idea. but they borrow a lot of the layout leh, and shouldn't they at least credit where they got their ideas from? it'd be at least polite to do so.
btw, last i checked, they removed the shoutbox and added some other stuff in... to make it different i guess.
whatever it is, each community is different and unique.
haha, i can't tell which side i'm on.
Posted by tstar | 6/03/2007 01:21:00 PM
Nicole: Yeap. Its really the sincerest form of flattery. We should feel happy about it.
And of course they can't recreate our community. They don't have a shoutbox resident to begin with. :D
tstar: Nowadays where got people put credits one? Anyway, no need for credits lah. People will know about it one day.
Posted by DK | 6/03/2007 01:48:00 PM
In open-source or open-content copying, credits are always given to the originator of the source or content. Even the Malaysian clone of Digg acknowledged that they copied from Digg.
This Vietnamese clone, however, has copied almost wholesale (ideas and layout) from ping.sg but didn't even give credit to ping.sg (let alone ask permission). This is NOT right. Layout is a form of expression covered under the copyright law. I wonder: How does the copyright law in Vietnam work?
Posted by ClappingTrees | 6/03/2007 02:38:00 PM
clappingtree: I guess just let it be. :)
Posted by DK | 6/03/2007 03:51:00 PM
no crediting nowadays meh? oops. that's so sad! crediting is good!
Posted by tstar | 6/03/2007 04:42:00 PM
clapping tree. you wonder how it works?
maybe the copyright meant hey, i saw it, let's COPY..it..RIGHT away. LOL
Posted by Keropokman | 6/04/2007 07:11:00 PM