Yeah, you heard me right, its alright to be a clone. Why?
Google wasnt the first search engine
Twitter wasnt the first microblog
Facebook wasnt the first social network
The ipod wasnt the first personal music player
The iphone wasnt the first phone or first touch screen phone.
What really made these products and services successful is the way they were implemented.
Google had the PAGERANK algorithm
Facebook had the “WALL”,
Twitter had its 140 character limit
THe iphone and ipod had “Steve Jobs” (no, seriously, they had a superbly made hardware combined with even better software which the Japanese portable players popular at the time and other phone makers didn’t have). All they did was to take something and add an innovative twist to its implementation which made it seem “original”.
This means in Nigeria’s tech scene, you can take an already tested idea which would be locally relevant, tweak it to create a breakout product or service and you would come out looking like a tech star. Example:
1. Instead of creating a Twitter clone, why don’t you create a fully mobile “Twitter” which works with sms. You “tweet” by texting a 140 character message to a short code and your followers receive you “tweet” from that short code. Your business model would be sms advertising based. [1]
It doesn’t really take much to be “original” all you have to do is to copy. So please go ahead be a clone.
Notes:
1. Something like this already exists in India called Gupshup and its very huge in India and most importantly its profitable.
