When the Facebook platform launched two years ago there were hundreds of copycats of successful applications that popped up almost instantaneously. Two years later we are back in the same position except this time it’s big app developers stealing from each other. Flixster and iLike have literally stolen entire chunks of Living Social’s extremely popular Pick 5 application which has attracted over 14 million users in a couple of weeks.
Early on the Facebook platform was considered the wild west but it appears that not much has actually changed. Large developers publicly steal from other developers which occasionally end up in costly legal battles. This time around there’s no indication that it will end up in court but for large developers with millions of dollars of funding and cash flow, directly ripping off other companies seems like a pretty weak strategy. Then again Facebook directly rips off features of other companies, such as the “Like” feature on feed stories which was lifted from FriendFeed.
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