By Katia Moskvitch Technology reporter, BBC
News
Pinterest clones have flooded China's web world - only months
after the social image-sharing website reached massive popularity.
The site has recently surpassed 10 million users, in record time.
Copying it seems to be the latest cloning trend in China - a
country known for copying the designs of everything from shoes and cars to
iPads and tech start-ups.
Tech blogs say there are about 20 Chinese clones of Pinterest
already.
Some copycats modify the original site's design only slightly,
while others go a step further.
In the long run, cloning websites could provide huge benefits to
the Chinese economy, says Hamid Sirhan, a strategist at social media agency
FreshNetworks in London.
Cloning trend
In China, locals joke that they have much more choice of products
than in the Western world - and in a way, they do.
Local markets offer anything and everything that looks like the
original version, but often with subtle differences.
"Buying a copy is much cheaper, and although clones are all
based on existing technologies and designs, often companies customise their
product for the Chinese market," says Lu Yang, a Chinese BBC World Service
journalist.
"For example, my grandmother has a mobile phone that looks
just like one of the Nokia models - but it has much bigger buttons with huge
digits so is easier for old people to use, and also has a SOS button for
emergency calls."
And the online world is no stranger to cloning.
For instance, in 2011 copycats of a social network Tumblr were
popping up here and there, with one of the most popular clones being Diandian.
Pinterest is one of the fastest-growing social networks
Even a major Chinese Facebook clone, Renren, and China's microblogging
site Sina Weibo, dubbed a hybrid of Facebook and Twitter, launched their own
Tumblr-type blogs - Renren Stations and Qing.
But in the second half of 2011, Pinterest clones started to
emerge.
'Pin' and shop
One of the most recent ones is Alibaba Group's social shopping
platform Fa Xian.
It was launched only four weeks ago in a test mode, but already
has some 60,000 viewers a day.
Just like Pinterest, it lets users "pin" images of items
on virtual pinboards, where others can then post comments.
But with a different twist, Fa Xian lets people shop, too -
anything pinned on the platform is available for purchase through two
Alibaba-operated websites, Taobao Mall and Taobao Marketplace.
Besides Fa Xian, two other Pinterest clones have proved a huge
success in China - Mogujie.com and Meilishuo.com.
But instead of letting users "pin" images from anywhere
on the web, they only offer content from China's biggest e-commerce site,
Taobao.com.
On Mogujie, visitors can buy items as well.
Hamid Sirhan at FreshNetworks notes that "while Pinterest has
faced criticism for surreptitiously inserting paid-for content, Chinese
entrepreneurs seem much more prepared to link some of these networks to
commerce."
"I am looking to these Chinese clones to provide the next key
paradigms in social commerce."
'Suppressing creativity'
Just like sharing "pinned" Pinterest images on Facebook
and Twitter, Chinese clones allow you to share on Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo,
another Twitter copycat.
There are other Pinterest clones that, just like the original
website, do not allow users to shop and open the entire web space for
"pinning" images.
They include Qihu 360's, Woxihuan.com, Huaban.com and iCaitu.com.
But while clones of anything and everything in both the online and
physical world continue to emerge in China, Ms Yang thinks that it would be
nice if one day China would see its copycatting activities from a slightly
different perspective.
"We are great at cloning, everyone knows that - and I think
that copying foreign technology is a stepping stone for the modern
Chinese," she says.
"It wouldn't be fair to say that we are incapable of
creativity; perhaps we are a little behind in modern technology, yet we're
catching up fast.
"I'm sure we will see original stuff coming out of China
soon."
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