Imitation may be the highest form of flattery...

..but this is ridiculous.

'Listening to the conversation' should be a part of any cogent social media marketing strategy (Factiva have produced a good white paper on this subject - free download here ) so we track mentions of Carve, our clients, and some worthy competitors using a variety of tools including Google Alerts, Technorati and Sphere   

Anyway, we received two Google alerts for our client itsalesjobs.com  -  triggered by their domain name, which led us to the following pages:

• http://www.admiz.com/view_project.php?sb_id=1087
• http://www.getafreelancer.com/projects/PHP-NET/Clone-itsalesjobs-com-web-site.html

So what we're basically looking at here is someone wanting an exact replica of the site - a rip off - to presumably launch a competitor service. And look at the prices being quoted! The winner bidder appears to be AplusEsolutions in Pakistan, for around US$280  - at 8US$ per hour...

Has anyone experienced anything like before? Is there anything you can do to stop it?

Meanwhile, I'll see if AplusEsolutions will do us a clone of ebay for less than 300 notes.. :)

Comments

[John Whitehurst]

Hey Paul,

Yes i have come across this a lot ... protecting IP in the media is very difficult.

I have had friends outsource to india and say the quality of work is excellent.

I don't think it is anything we can control - maybe we just have to embrace it.

Do you want to market your version of ebay on my version of google?

J