April 28, 2008
Attack of the Clones
Most of us spend our lives trying to forget the world we had imagined for ourselves as children. But occasionally a single act is so transcendently shameless that it makes us feel happy and human again. For example: an indignant would-be competitor in Arizona just asked an online real estate forum for help getting his money back on an effort to clone Redfin.
My name is Ron Park and I have been working with a service provider, TechnoUSA, from Houston/India to create my real estate mash-up site. My project on getacoder.com was for a Redfin.com clone, in all functionalities and appearance. They were supposed to finish the site by January 25th, 2008 but yesterday, 4/24/08, I told them I’m through with them. The site is nowhere near being a Redfin clone, and they’ve just been problematic from the start. I have given this company a total of $10,500; and the amount of money I can possibly retrieve back with these credit card disputes is $8,500… the agreement was for a Redfin clone. [the emphasis is ours]
It is one thing to copy another site, another to copy it letter for letter, yet another to publicize matter-of-factly your efforts to clone it, and still yet another to feel wronged for what you have done.
To process Mr. Park’s refund, the credit card company is asking for “a letter from another reputable merchant or service provider supporting your claim.” So far, no one has come forward. In fact, we were gratified to see other folks leap to our defense. One respondent said you could never build Redfin.com for $10,000; the true cost is apparently closer to $40,000 (which is what one of our engineers costs over three months).
The clone site copies Redfin right down to the Sweet Digs link in the footer and the message we display while fetching listings. Reviewing the site, it’s hard not to wonder if the developers had ever heard of “search and replace”: many Tareu.com pages still encourage visitors to work with Redfin. But it was the one original element that turned out to be our favorite touch: “Copyright 2008 TAREU.COM.”
What’s amazing is that these guys aren’t even the first Redfin clones. That honor belongs to Allcheckdeals, an online brokerage in India run by naukri.com. Allcheckdeals copied Redfin right down to our graphics, albeit with a Groucho-Marx style disguise:
Here, courtesy of Sellsius blog, are the graphics Redfin was running at the time:
Many thanks to Morgan Carey, CEO of Real Estate Webmasters, for bringing this to our attention. Mr. Park participated in the Real Estate Webmasters’ forums but is not a Real Estate Webmasters customer.
Savan said:
Are you kidding me? Blatant rip-offs are so ridiculous. It frustrates me.
April 28, 2008 8:16 PM
Seattle Startup Life » Bitin’ my style. said:
[…] Today, my chaps at Redfin referred me to a design jackin’ so hard that it makes Tupac want to cry. It was so shameless, that my fellow colleague, Glenn Kelman, aka G-mail, aka Gangsta Boogie, aka G-Pac, wrote a blog about it. […]
April 28, 2008 8:36 PM
Frank LL0SA- Broker FranklyRealty.com said:
At least they didn’t call it BlueFlipper.com
April 29, 2008 7:03 AM
Janelle said:
I can’t stop laughing at the Groucho-Marx comment… Can you hear my cackle from there?
April 29, 2008 10:12 AM
Matt Goyer’s Real Estate Blog » Blog Archive » What Would it Cost to Clone Redfin? said:
[…] thread has been commented on by a few people, Marlow, Glenn our CEO and Savan our former […]
April 29, 2008 10:22 AM
Jay Thompson said:
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery?
Sadly, it wasn’t even a very good imitation. Not even close.
How anyone could think it’s acceptable to “clone” a site is mind-boggling. At least Mr. Park had the fortitude to “fess up” on the REW forum that he’d made a colossal error… That was better than sulking off into the ether never to be heard from again.
May 1, 2008 9:08 AM
Patrick said:
Wow! That site was sad…. Really Really sad.
May 2, 2008 2:43 PM
Ron Park said:
To Mr. Kelman and the entire Redfin staff:
I offer you my sincerest apologies. If you could just give me a couple minutes of your time to explain myself and continuously apologize for my wrong doings.
In hindsight, it’s clear how ridiculous my desires to have a Redfin clone were. I am being truthfully honest. I am not a tech person. I was oblivious to the facts of website creation & internet business. I’ve come across a website called getacoder.com and I saw many jobs for “clones.” It’s stupid to me now, but I thought it’s all fair game to create a clone (Once again, how naive I was… I admit it and am ashamed by it).
I can sit for days on the computer and just browse through home listings. And for the easiest, user-friendliest, and actually fun website to do that at was Redfin.com. There are many cities in the US where real estate websites are just terrible, and my city of Tucson is one of them. I thought that if I can have a clone of Redfin for my city, I can provide a new way of searching for homes.
I didn’t have any malicious intent with my desire to have a Redfin clone. I only wanted to have a website as great as Redfin for my city of Tucson. What I know now, what I have learned now… I honestly did not know it when I started the project in November 2007 and until everything came crashing down at the end of April. I am sorry, I really am.
The project is incomplete, and it will never be completed. It has never went live nor has it been used for any lead generation. I have gotten nothing from this project but hard lessons learned and maxed out credit card debt.
I sincerely apologize to everyone at Redfin.
-Ron Park
May 10, 2008 9:08 PM