Yappd wasn't on the scene long that is for sure. It was basically an exact copy of twitter, a "me too" app that no one thought would last long. With the success of twitter however, more and more companies must recognize that twitter is onto something with the microblogging concept.  Here is the note on Yappd's website:

" We want to let our members know that we have been acquired by a third party. The future of Yappd will be in the form of another website that will most likely employ the same type of technology that we have created. In preparation for that site, we are going to close down the website. November 5, 2007 will be our last day of operation in our current form. We want to thank all of our members and developers, who have created amazing applications, for all of your support. It's because of all of you that we have made Yappd a success."

It seems like there are more and more Twitter clones every week now. Honestly, not sure what the point of these are in the North American / English speaking market. What is the reason NOT to use Twitter. There are hundreds of apps and 3rd party offerings and add ons to customize and use Twitter as you see fit.

This latest one is called Yappd . It is pretty much an exact copy of Twitter except for the fact that you can include pictures. Also, you can not recieve updates from friends on SMS or email. Other than that, it is the same except less developed and maybe not ready to scale (not that we think it will be popular enough to need to scale anyway). Here is a screenshot (that is as close as we are going to get to signing up for Yappd).

We will be sticking with trusty old Twitter , if you want to send pictures with Twitter see Dave Winer's Flickr to Twitter solution . Or wait until Twitter Inc. comes out with this feature. It has been said before but we will say it again now... Who the heck wants to get all their friends to sign up and move onto yet another platform?

The Chinese Twitter clones are rolling out the software factory doors at a frightening pace. Another new entrant is now trying to get marketshare.

TaoTao is one that has a good chance to make it. It's backers are QQ , the insanely popular messaging network. QQ is currently the number 10 website in the world (according to alexa) and at one point in time, a vast majority of the Chinese net population used QQ as their IM solution. They have millions and millions of users to say the least. If they do a good job of cross marketing they should be able to get almost instant uptake. It will also be interesting on how they integrate with their existing QQ service and mobile phones.

Does any of this Chinese stuff matter? Yes, we think so. At the end of last year there were 137 million web users in China (by official goverment accounts) and by the end of 2007 that is projected to hit 200 million. You see, soon there will be more Internet users in China than ALL OF THE PEOPLE in the USA. The stakes are high and the west doesn't have access to the market (for the most part) due to language and other barriers.

Kevin Rose's new startup called Pownce has got a lot of coverage around the net so far. It is a Twitter, file sending, link sending web service.

This review video from CenterNetworks is a good overview..

We won't be changing over from Twitter, not that impressive.

We posted a while ago about Twitter Clones (here and here ) and it looks like one of the Chinese "copy cat Twitters" are gaining popularity quickly.  It is called Fanfou .  It already has a wordpress plugin, maxthon plug and other 3rd party add ons.  It also has two Twittervision-like mashups that put Tweets on the 3D globe and a 2D map of China .  With 300 million Internet users there is no doubt that the China market is going to be a force to be reckoned with in the near future.  

Here is a screenshot of the pageviews of Twitter, Jaiku and Fanfou.  Fanfou has made it into the top 100,000 sites in the world, we will see if it can continue it's growth.

The German Twitter clone Dukudo is up for sale on eBay. They say that it cost them 25,000 Euro to build and the bids are currently sitting around 15,000 Euro.

Here is the auction page at ebay .

Thanks to Techcrunch for breaking the story .

Thanks to this article at the Startup Squad for the info on this one.

 "Among all the companies out there, Webaroo wants to do a Twitter clone targeted at Indian users. Their version is named as - GupShup(aka chit chat).  Hmm. I am a bit lost out there. Launched last year by Rakesh Mathur of Junglee fame(acquired by Amazon in 1998), Webaroo delivers online content as webpacks for offline consumption. What have the two products have in common? From the functionality perspective - nothing. From the user perspective - yeah both are free products up for grabs. Is that the point of correlation?

So, is the new business strategy at Webaroo to copy whatever is there the market that can be get done with quickly, while their core product grows at it’s own pace? While I am too sure about that, I think the idea might work in this case since Webaroo is targeting Indian demographic, while Twitter Twitters only in US...."

Read the full article here. 

They mention in the article that Twitter is just to easy to understand and also build technically.  There are going to be many copies.  Who will survive? 

Following on from our previous post about Twitter clones ..

 This list came from a Chinese blogger here. We haven't checked through the list to see how similar the sites are but maybe you know about them? If you do, post a comment about it..

We are pondering what the chances of country specific Twitter copies taking off will be? thoughts?

Twitter-clone sites
from Germany
http://www.wamadu.de :Impressive feature set, active community, also available with local numbers for Austria and Switzerland. http://www.frazr.com/
http://www.faybl.de/
http://www.partnr.de/
http://www.texteln.de/
http://www.familyone.de/
http://www.1you.de/

from Japan
http://timelog.jp/
http://mogo2.jp/
http://haru.fm/

from China
http://komoo.cn/
http://byuu.com/

Chinese Twitter-like sites:
http://weazone.com/
http://popwu.com/
http://www.v2ex.com/ing
http://bulo.hjenglish.com/ing

from English,Italiano and Francais speaking countries
http://www.hictu.com (English,Italiano,Francais)

from Spain
http://www.twilove.com
http://mexicodiario.com

Twitter-like sites
http://www.jaiku.com/
http://gatsb.com/
http://www.radar.net/
http://www.yelp.com/
http://www.meshly.com/
http://www.kyte.tv
http://www.phonetagit.net/tstart.aspx
http://www.spinvox.com/
http://panraven.com/
http://www.letmeparty.com/
http://www.mysay.com/
http://jott.com/
http://www.nowthen.com
http://www.gluenow.com/
http://www.feedxs.com/
http://loopnote.com/
http://plusmo.com
http://www.tiggdo.com/
http://zaptxt.com
http://www.blogarithm.com/
http://immedi.at/
http://www.anothr.com

We have read several reports about exact Twitter copies around the world. China, Russia and now Germany and France. This article by Matt Marshall talks about Frazr which even has the same question as Twitter "Everyone wants to know: What are you doing?" In the comments it says there are at least 7 clones in Germany already.

 The question that begs to be answered is.. How many Twitter services can the world handle? Is the main attraction the buzz, growth and depth of users and depth of 3rd party services around the real Twitter? Or is this really all about microblogging with short messages?

Jaiku does the same thing as Twitter, maybe even better, but for some reason people don't think that is 'as cool as Twitter'. We have tried Jaiku and it is a slick and great service but the problem is... Everyone is on Twitter.

If you know of any other Twitter Clones, pls post them in the comments!  

Pete Cashmore has a blog post that covers this well with a screenshot so I won't repeat the details here. 

This brings up the question, where does the line get drawn with others copying? Being copied is supposed to be the ultimate form of flattery but.. facebook put twitter-like functionality, now bebo, next My Space, Flickr and everyone else (guessing here!). The good thing for Twitter is that they have momentum and a community starting around their service. They also have the brand name so I think it would be difficult for a new standalone Twitter to be successful. A Yahoo, Google, Facebook, My Space could come out on top though, the ones with the existing users could. We will see.