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Comment by wesley | Hacker News Reader

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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Echo that. Besides, unless the creator deliberately sets out to copy every last detail of the original, their knowledge of local customs will inevitably result in subtle design differences that will make the "clone" a much more cohesive and pleasant experience for people in the target market, even those who can speak English.

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.

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.

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:-)

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.

Could, yeah, lots of things could happen. My guess is the "first mover localization play" is, more often than not, a lower risk, lower payoff sort of thing. You're never going to be the next Google, but then again, you can see that the original service is working pretty well - you're not creating something that's never been done before, so you have an example to follow, and if you execute well and play your cards right, you have a decent (or at least better) shot at making money than the 'blue sky' sorts of projects.

I think it puts you at a disadvantage. It's generally far easier for the established, high-traffic, high PR, etc... player to add a new resource bundle with language de jour, than for you to rebuild their application and get the traction they already have.

Plus, if they came up with something new to begin with, they probably have smart folks coming up with ideas on what to add/enhance next.

I'm not saying it's a bad business move, or that doing something in order to make money is wrong, but copying someone else's effort just feels a lot closer to domain squatting than creating value (although yes, having a localized version of the web-app has some value) to me.

While I wasn't first to the market space with 10MinuteMail (actually I hadn't even looked if anyone else was doing it, as I was just doing it to teach myself Seam), 10MinuteMail definitely had a twist on the temporary e-mail thing (a good twist for some users/uses, bad for others). 20MinuteMail sprang up shortly after 10MintuteMail, and there a number of people who have or are trying to sell "10 Minute Mail Clone" scripts on various sites. So I've been on the receiving end of the pure cloning play. It feels kinda slimy to me. Plus 20mintutemail has less users since Aug '07 than I had before lunch today, so I'm really not sure it's a smart move for the cloners.

I think that cloning a website by localizing it for another country only really makes sense when the community around the website is a big part of its value. In this case the new community surronding the localized version is going to provide a significant advantage to the cloner.

For 10MinuteMail, there is not as much value added by localizing it so it's certainly not a good idea to clone it...

I too had the same thought. If he(friend) wants to go for money over an interesting hacker life and his clone idea works out, he has his share of cake.

If he chooses an interesting hacker life over money, he sure shouldn't clone it if he cannot add innovative ideas to it.

I'm glad that a lot of guys here share my hacker zeal.

Definitely. This is like Bollywood/Hindi movies making rip-offs of English movies. It still adds value because it brings the idea (the story) to a number of people who wouldn't have been able to use it otherwise (language barrier).

America's Hollywood also does this to foreign films, though it's rarely anything close to what you'd call an improvement.

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