A Peek At Didja.com: VeryFunnyAds Clone

Although “advertising as entertainment” site Didja.com is not launching until next year, the NYT has a sneak peak at what it will look like (screen shot below). The NBC Universal project is part of the yet unnamed News Corp/NBC Universal cooperative strategy against Youtube. However, New Co.’s second “major assult” on YouTube looks like more of the same, a clone of TBS’s VeryFunnyAds. It’s very similar to the TBS re-branding effort, letting users watch heaps of ads by search, ratings, and sort by various companies and countries.

That’d all make sense if New Co. was copying a successful site, but VeryFunnyAds doesn’t appear to be a resounding winner despite the 63 million clip views the site article says they delivered over the past year. That number of views suggests an average of 5 million videos streamed each month, but the viewership of the site doesn’t stack up.

After an initial bump on launch, VeryFunnyAds’ traffic has since tapered out at about 100,000 uniques per month, according to Comscore. Sixty-three million streams is a lot of traffic for an audience that size, especially since they don’t allow off-site video embeds. Heavy.com, whose network generated about 6 million streams in April has about 5.2 million uniques per month. If the numbers are true, it appears TBS’s site is at most attracting a small cadre of ad fanatics.

Contrary to the “advertainment” meme going around, it doesn’t look like it has legs.

Verwandt.de: German Geni Clone

Germany is starting to build a name for itself as the startup cloning capital of the world. German clones of popular U.S. services keep popping up. Twitter (Frazr, Dukudu). and Facebook (Studi.vz) are two recent examples. TechCrunch contributor Gregor Hochmuth termed these German clones Copy/Paste innovation.

The latest German clone, Verwandt, means “related” in English. Its design and functionality is very similar to its U.S. counterpart, Geni. In fact it goes well beyond similar - Verwandt is a Geni clone dressed up in some cuddlier graphics. It uses the same layout and quick sign-up flash-based registration form as the U.S. site. They’ve also copied the family tree navigation and profile pages. Take a look below to judge the similarities for yourself.

The motivation and business process is clear: 1) Find a proven concept in the U.S. or elsewhere, 2) Clone the service, 3) Profit. And they have been profiting off these clones quite a bit. The Samwer Brothers have invested in Alando.de (eBay clone sold to eBay) and Studi.vz (Facebook clone sold for $100 million). They’re also investors in Frazr. See Gregor’s post for a longer list of clones. Certainly other countries, including the U.S., engage in their fair share of cloning as well. However, the flood of clones coming from Germany suggests an unwelcome trend.

Verwandt seems to be cloning some of Geni’s success as well. They have over 1.5 million profiles in under 2 months of operation, compared to Geni’s 5 million. They’ve also secured an undisclosed level of financing, most certainly helped by Geni’s $100 million valuation.

There’s a lot of great innovation going on outside the U.S., but this rip and flip mentality may prove short-sighted as the real McCoys continue to innovate and internationalize, and solid German startups like Xing are forgotten in the controversy.