Business 2.0 Magazine published a feature in their August edition entitled “Send in the Clones”. International entrepreneurs, inspired by the success of some of the biggest Web 2.0 services, have created their own local knockoffs. TechCrunch rebuts “Who is cloning who?”, pointing to some comparative mistakes and first-to-market mixed ups.

Here’s the chart that was included in the print:

The list unexpectedly included countries such as Mexico and Turkey having their own local version of Digg, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube. And to think, Turkey has the most expensive broadband prices in the world — $81.13 (Php3,650.85) per megabit per second.

In the Philippines, I can name about half a dozen sites similar to Digg. This is primarily caused by the open-source software called Pligg. You can basically run your own Digg site in minutes. Facebook? Yup we got one in the form of Eskwela. As for LinkedIn and YouTube, there seems to be none at the moment.

The other question would be “why localized Web 2.0 counterparts don’t work?”. I think it’s both language and culture.We’re more attuned to the western cultural influence and we’re proficient in English. If the vastly popular and original one works just fine, why make another local version?

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