I have asked it myself for some time now. Nothing new seem to come out of the pipes - just the same idea with no unique new features that take it to the next level. - Niclas Strandh

What apps would those be? - Brian Sullivan

NIHS at its worst. But yes they do. Because their solution way more awesome than the prior art out there. I'm generally cool with and have authored a couple of me-too's that were ports from one language or platform to another. It's a good test of the new platform or library. - James Williams

Brian- some recent examples: Kwippy, YokTok. But give me a week. I'll find you five more. They're all the same. - Chris Brogan

Do you not count Identi.ca amongst those? People seem to have nothing but praise for them, but do not for the others. Why do you think that is? - Clint Ecker

Out of curiosity, what is YokTok? Do you mean Yokway? - Rob Diana

There's also Utterz and SecondBrain. Still think Socialmedian and Plurk are two others, but people seem to love them, too. - Mark Trapp

Do you think that possibly we're arriving at a critical mass within application development? This leading to longer periods of time between apps that are unique and game changing ... - Beebo Wallace

@clint Identi.ca is one I recommend against using more than in a token manner due to their insidious copyright agreement they force you to sign giving them all rights to your content. - Leslie Poston

@Rob - yes, YokWay. Sorry. I knew it was something like that. I don't hate it. Just dont' see why we need yet another of something we have in spades. Where's the innovation? - Chris Brogan

@Beebo - if that's so, then why are we making apps? It's like talking just to keep our place at the table. - Chris Brogan

I think folks like identi.ca because it's a sign that we might be able to federate twitter's yummy goodness some day. That's worth doing, I guess. I'm just not participating there. Nor plurk. Nor Jaiku. Nor Pownce. Oy. - Chris Brogan

I think the reason for some of the applications is because the barrier to entry is so low, and the potential revenue is huge in the social space. Plus the aggregation or social news sites do not "create" anything, they either collect it automatically or people submit stuff. Not a lot of knowledge is required to get in. Succeeding is a different issue. - Rob Diana

So why fill up a car lot with not-bad models? And you're right. We're all scrambling around to do SOMETHING. But what? - Chris Brogan

Chris, I never saw too much complaining over me-too shareware apps. Why do the rules get more stringent now that they are on the Web? Why not have a Yokway, a BlogRize, a FriendFeed, and a SocialThing? It's the same reason we have multiple RSS readers, multiple Web browsers, and the like. - Louis Gray

@Chris, I think you just found your answer. We are looking for something, but what? Is the current FriendFeed the "final answer" in social software? No. As early adopters we still see a lot of issues on FriendFeed. Until someone dominates the space you will see a lot of similar applications. - Rob Diana

@Louis - I guess it's okay to have lots of ways to do the same thing. Hundreds of bands and all that. But for ever musical movement, there were two or three catalysts and then several dozen me-toos. Maybe I'm just raging against the machine a bit. I mean hey, let everyone try out their methods. I imagine we're the market and we'll decide, eh? - Chris Brogan

Louis, with shareware products, you can choose the tool that you like the most, and gain value from that. It doesn't matter if only a few people were using it, as long as you personally derived value from it, it was okay. Now, all social apps gain value from lots of people using them: even if you personally like one, it doesn't matter if no one you know or like is using it. It gets worse as more and more people decide to choose their platform arbitrarily, in order to keep up with everyone you want to, you have to also be on each service that all do more or less the same thing. Maybe the solution isn't consolidation, but interoperability. - Mark Trapp

Yeah - I don't get it. I don't quite see the value-add to many of them either. I'm on identi.ca because it's based on open source code, but none of the others seem to have much value-add beyond what Twitter gives me. - Jesse Stay

"Me too" often happens because people are frustrated by the same things...at the same time. Sometimes I speak with a person with a new Web 2.0 idea, and they can't talk about it in detail...so I suggest that they might do A, B, C, ..., G, H. Then they go wow, that's exactly what we're doing. Sometimes I mention that companies W, X, Y, and Z are doing similar projects. Nobel prizes in science often split between 2-3 groups for the same reason... A _disadvantage_ of "competition" is duplication of effort. - Mitchell Tsai

+1 Leslie for the identi.ca comment. Is identi.ca like Facebook in that they both own everything you post? - Mitchell Tsai

No Mitchell, they require you to accept a CC license so everyone can use what you write. - Mark Trapp

Thanks Mark. That sounds better. I've warned people who want to do VC/Business discussions on Facebook about Facebook's lousy ownership rules. Buy/rent a white-label social network or collaboration tool. Tons of "me too" stuff in the white-label social networks. What are the better ones people have seen of those "me toos"? Any that look better? - Mitchell Tsai

Here's what *I* want: I want one profile with sub-views to rule them all. I want to write it all up ONCE, and port it everywhere. I want to have the same "known" friends just pop into these new apps, and not through a Gmail invite spam campaign. I want laser-tight segmented velvet rope communities where you're not all invited, but where people who have something deeply in common will share bits of themselves there, some elsewhere, and then we'll all get back together here, at the commons. FriendFeed is the - Chris Brogan

I think a bunch of teams building similar products is great. It's the "let a thousand flowers bloom" philosophy. The market will bear out the niche products and the unsatisfactory ones will fade away and disappear until the community has selected the "best" service. At maturity, there will be a primary "winner" with several small niche services. Plurk, for example, is extremely popular if you believe Alexa #'s. It seems to have way more web traffic than Pownce at the moment. - Clint Ecker

Are they always the same app? Is the artist who paints sunflowers wasting their time just because Van Gogh has already done it? Hey even Van Gogh did it again and again because he was not satisfied. - Ian D. Nock

By the arguments here wasn't Google the same as AltaVista, Lotus the same as Visicalc, Safari the same as Firefox and I am sure I could name dozens of others - Brian Sullivan

But they were all different, those ones you listed, and they all advanced the medium. What has Kwippy advanced? - Chris Brogan

Advancement is in the eye of the beholder though. It is easy in retrospect to say they advanced the medium but at the time not so much. - Brian Sullivan

Moot, then. I can't say I know what should be an advancement or not. I know that my barrier to actually USING most of these new networks is lower and lower, as is my barrier to even bothering to blog their existence. - Chris Brogan

When the barrier to reviewing them approaches the barrier to producing though I agree there is something out of whack. But isn't this what computer technology has been striving for? Easy, near instant creation of complex applications? I think it may be a case of be careful what you wish for. - Brian Sullivan

Not me. I think it's "we're getting flabby and lazy in our application and thinking." We need to shoot for the next layer, not just stop at "gee, people talking to each other is cool!" Presence, multi-modal, etc. We've got a chance to do something next-ish. But not if we just create yet another ____. (Mind you, I can't hello world my way out of a box.) - Chris Brogan

Twitter had the opportunity to own the microblogging space, but they've dropped the ball. Now you see a lot of people scrambling to pick it up and run with it. I'd argue that those who don't have the technical chops to solve the problems Twitter has run into are doomed to fail from the start, and those who don't spend time up front thinking of a way to monetize the platform are doomed to fail in the long term. The right blend of tech and biz exists, I promise. - Jason Carreira

Hey Chris -- not sure if you think socialmedian might be a "me too" app (someone else mentioned us (sorta) in this post. I've got say that all we think about is making users happy, meeting their needs, and solving their problems. Whether someone else has done bit and pieces of what we're doing is less relevant. it's how it's all brought together in a unique and hopefully user-satisfying way that matters most in the end. - Jason Goldberg

was myspace a me too app? curious people's thoughts. I think it was. but they did me too much better than the original (friendster) and nailed their target audience beyond belief - Jason Goldberg

Hi Jason - and boy do YOU get a say in this conversation. You're definitely working on something that could be an evolutionary step. Are you digg+friendfeed? What do you think the lasting NEXT generation of Social Median will bring to the story? If everything magically takes off and you get $6 Mil to run with it all (or whatever), what's next in your eyes on where it goes? - Chris Brogan

Chris: 2 reasons why yokway is not a me too app. 1) yokway was founded around the same time friendfeed did and 2) yokway is focusing more on micro-reviews of things across small circle of friends (yelp for the people in your address book) - so although they are some similarities with friendfeed there are some interesting differences too. - Edwin Khodabakchian

@Edwin - well excellent. I wish YokWay the best. I'm going to pass on it for now. I ask Twitter for reviews at present. I can see how preserving them in time and place might be useful, but I don't need another platform for that right now. - Chris Brogan

What you looking for? Your own voice? Your own thoughts? Your relevancy? If you have something to say you can do it anywhere and everywhere! Communication platforms are fluid, do not try to box them up and put boundaries around them! Just speak your mind son! KISS - Igor The Troll

I write my own apps that scratch my own itch. And hopefully someone else will also benefit from it. - Ernie Oporto

Chris - There's more coming from Yokway (another update). I, for one, don't write anyone off until they pack it in. We really never know, do we? - Charlie Anzman

Chris writes: " If everything magically takes off and you get $6 Mil to run with it all (or whatever), what's next in your eyes on where it goes?" -- we'll circle back on this real soon. Get to beta this week. Then, we'll starting talking about vision for future. Too heads down right now for that. - Jason Goldberg

I am not too sure about the fact that many people build "me too" applications and even if they do there will still be some dissimilarities(maybe unwittingly) in the execution.Kwippy started as an IM status aggregator(gtalk n yahoo) n evolved into a "microblogging app".We are trying to bring the best of blogging and microblogging worlds.IMHO Kwippy is more aligned towards blogging than others, no.character limit, threaded conversations, follow up comments,human readable permalinks are some of the differences - Mayank Dhingra

The Music industry in the 50's and 60's was nothing but "me too" stuff following occasional innovators. Even the Beatles started out playing the same blues standards that everyone else was playing. Art History is full of defined "periods" where everyone painted in the same style, following an occasional innovator. Look at how deep and rich the histories of music and art are. Surely the same patterns must apply to the interpipes too? - Sir Slippy of Slippington