Facebook’s Foreign Clones

Some international sites that closely mimic Facebook's design and features are already enjoying Facebook-like success. Creators of the German look-a-like site StudiVerzeichnis--German for "Student Index"--have gathered around 6 million registered users. VKontakte, a Russian university-based networking site whose name translates to "In Contact," boasts that it's not only the most popular social networking site in the country, but with 4.5 million unique visitors a day and 13.3 million registered users, the most popular site in Russia.

The Chinese site Xiaonei, whose name means "In the School" in Mandarin, claims to have received around 15 million unique visitors in April. The site's parent company, Oak Pacific Interactive, received $430 million the same month in venture capital funding targeted at Xiaonei from the Japanese investment firm Softbank.

The copycats' explosive growth comes at a time when Facebook seems to be exploring its own international offshoots. Since January, the social network has invited volunteers to translate its pages into languages ranging from Italian to Mandarin and has launched Spanish, French and German options. Li Ka-Shing, one of Facebook's biggest investors, recently upped his stake in the company by more than $40 million, saying he saw synergies between Facebook and the telecom business of his conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa--a company that runs mobile networks in Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

But Facebook's clones may have already saturated some international markets. In China, for instance, where the Web audience numbers more than 220 million users by the count of research firm BDA China, Xiaonei has already registered more than 90% of college students, according to Oak Pacific Interactive's chief operating officer, James Liu. He compares Facebook to Google, eBay and MySpace, all of which have tried to penetrate China's Web market and been trounced by local competitors.

"We've seen what happens to these multinational corporations that try to enter to China," he says. "Every one has failed miserably. We don't expect any exception in the case of Facebook."

Taking legal action against international doppelgangers isn't likely to help, says Gregory Rutchik, head of the Arts and Technology Law Group. Web design, he says, is a form of expression where even minor tweaks may be enough to avoid copyright infringement. Litigating country by country, he adds, would be a long, expensive and uncertain process.
Facebook may have another reason to avoid copyright lawsuits, points out John Dozier, an Internet-focused intellectual property lawyer. Flinging copyright complaints, he suggests, might work against Facebook if it finds itself on the receiving end of a copyright suit--a likely possibility on a site where users can post any content they choose.