Chinese Facebook Copycat Gets Acquired

It only takes a two second look of Xiaonei.com homepage to realize that the founder had no qualms copying every aspect of facebook, even down to its design. Looks like it paid off though. Oak Pacific Interactive, a Chinese internet company, has announced that it acquired Xiaonei.com for an undisclosed amount and will integrate its Xiaonei’s 1 million members with its already existing social network.

Eventhough I don’t condone this type of action, Facebook had it coming. On numerous occasions Zuckerberg and his PR staff have said they are not interested in pursuing the international market. The space was left wide open, and I’m hitting myself for not creating facebook copy cats in Australia, China, Japan, France, Germany and any other country back in 2004.

Is there anything Facebook can do about this? Probably not. The Chinese site didn’t copy any of its logos or other information, just the general layout and color scheme. Unfortunately trademark and copyright laws do not protect against this. Does Zuckerberg really care? Probably not (and I wouldn’t either if I were him)…hes about to cash out in the range of $1 Billion dollars anyways.

[tags]Social Network, Social Networking, Facebook, Xiaonei.com, Xiaonei, Brian Balfour[/tags]