Facebook’s Foreign Clones

"Facebook is being particularly careful," Dozier says. "They recognize the danger that overly aggressive copyright claims can backfire." As for Facebook's mimics, they emphasize small differences they say set them apart. VKontakte's founder, Pavel Durov, argues that his site's shade of blue is slightly different from Facebook's, and that it offers better location-based searching. Xiaonei's James Liu points out that Xiaonei has fewer barriers separating networks of friends, and offered instant messaging even before Facebook added the feature in April.

But Wang Xing, who created Xiaonei in 2005, admits that the site's design was originally "borrowed" from Facebook. In fact, he's borrowed it twice: After selling Xiaonei to Oak Pacific Interactive in 2006 for an undisclosed sum, Wang essentially cloned his Facebook clone.
Hainei, Wang's second social networking project launched near the end of 2007, is aimed at adults rather than students, but its design is practically identical to Xiaonei's--and Facebook's. In six months, it's attracted more than 100,000 registered users, Wang says.

Asked if he feels any compunction about taking features wholesale from Facebook--twice--Wang points to Mark Zuckerberg's own copycat problems. Since 2004, the owners of rival site ConnectU have claimed that Zuckerberg stole intellectual property from their social network while working as a software developer for the site.

"ConnectU accuses Facebook of stealing their idea. Does that matter?" Wang asks. "No. We don't worry about that. It's not about the idea. It's about execution."

Jane Tuv contributed to this article.

© 2008