So it would seem that the outrage of the author is misplaced. The emphasis is put on the fact that the sites are being cloned, but that is not where the value lies. The value is in gaining traction in international markets. This practice seems perfectly legitimate to me. The straw man in this article is developed from the belief that the raw value of a startup comes only from the software.
They don't only clone, they also spam Pinterest with fake accounts. Those accounts post lots of comments linking back to Pinspire. So it's definitely not clean competition.
I wouldn't say it's completely misplaced. Any good product is a combination of parts, one part idea, one part execution, one part customer acquisition etc
We love to see totally original ideas succeed, we feel like they deserve it. Actually, cloned ideas can also be hard work only without the complication of having the idea in the first place!
Even so, it is kind of desperate when you have to keep copying other people, no one likes to see that. Although I'm sure it's not something they worry about while they back their yacht into the Monaco marina!
It seems to me like they are efficiently capitalizing on the ethnocentricity of the US. In a way I'm even happy they are reminding US startups of that.
While living in the states as a youngster I actually searched for that word quite a bit to describe what I was seeing around me: the sense that everything besides the US hardly existed at all.
