When Armageddon came out in theatres, Asteroid wasn’t too far behind. Likewise, Earthquake was succeeded by Volcano, another natural disaster movie. When the Bentley went luxury, Hyundai prepped their knock off. Recently this trend of ‘copying’ (a.k.a. stealing ideas) moved to the web when Yahoo was accused of copying Digg.com’s interface. Now, the African blogosphere is abuzz with allegations that South Africa’s own Afrigator was victim to a stealthy feature and brand clone. The accused is the newly launched, Regator.

What makes it suspect is the face that it’s a blog community aggregator, that also uses an Alligator brand and who’s primary function is to filter content. It’s also rather strange that although the two services have some similarities, Regator go way more press from Mashable.com, ReadWriteWeb.com and TechCrunch.com), three of the most popular blogs on the web.

When you get down to the essence the two products really are recognizably similar:

REGATOR

AFRIGATOR

What makes this such a big issue (in some eyes) is that Afrigator has been around longer but has the disadvantage of being ‘African’ a continent largely ignored by Silicon Valley and U.S. investors. To many it’s comes off as suspicious because while African tech gets little to NO press from the industry at large, this ‘johnny-come-lately’ has stolen the attention (and likely investors).

Before you shoot the messenger, personally I feel that in Regator’s defense, targeting yourself to Africa in effect says, “we have a niche audience we are targeting.” This might convey to some that Afrigator would never move beyond that audience. While you still have the choice of branching out later, you’re instantly pigeonholed into a space that doesn’t have the industry power to make you a ’star’. Obviously, when it comes to the U.S. market, the intrinsic built in audience has that power and the power to influence a large number of ‘connected’ people. One of the creators of Afrigator, Stii, echoes this philosophy:

As far as concept goes, I see it as totally different. Regator is more of a 9rules Network style service while Afrigator is a kind of Technorati like service, only more location based with a couple more bells and whistles. Vast difference there.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m NOT unappreciative of the support in the comments section of the holy trinity and on some blog posts**. Gosh, I’m actually quite dumbstruck by the passionate support. Thank you guys, I do appreciate it! I’m just trying to be realistic about it. I should probably be a bit more upset and protective about this issue, but then I’d lie. If we have been deliberately copied it just goes to show that Africa had a good idea someone else wanted. Not a bad thing at all!

while another wasn’t quite so flattered…

You may think it’s stupid to feel passionately about a brand you’ve created out of nothing but I don’t and will defend it. I wasn’t the only one either and I was really impressed by the support of the local blogosphere in our product. It was awesome to see the passion for our product.

Meanwhile, African bloggers have their own opinions (re: this and this.)

UPDATE: Members of both the Regator and Afrigator teams have contacted me to inform me that the accusations were blown way out of proportion and both now mutually agree that no infringement took place, intentional or otherwise. Two ‘retractions’ were published by Mike Stopforth and Justin Hartman.

Judge for yourself by signing up for http://afrigator.com and http://regator.com

Related…

• Afrigator: The Best of African Social Media, in Real Time

Afrigator

^[Map]
URL – http://afrigator.com
Email – dudes@afrigator.com

Afrigator is a social media aggregator and directory built especially for African digital citizens who publish and consume content on the web. It attempts to use social media tools and technologies to showcase the best digital content that the African continent has to offer, ranging from syndicated news feeds to blog posts, podcasts, videos and [...]

Information Provided by the Afridex