1. Imitation and cloning can work — just like it does in nature.

2. When imitation and cloning is looked down upon, it become extremely dangerous of the leader (in this case Facebook) looks down upon the cloner. Last time I checked, Facebook was an improvement on Friendster and MySpace. I guess MySpace could claim they were cloned.

3. Sun Tzu said about war. “never underestimate the enemy.” It applies to business. In this case, the best example is the auto industry. Japan, and especially Toyota, used to be considered a clone by the Big Three in Detroit. And I am sure it was irritating to see Toyota enter the U.S. market as a low cost alternative — initially. If you study the history of the auto industry and Toyota, you see a natural progression of the auto industry:

cloner –> competitor -> innovator -> leader
(Corolla) (Camry) (Lexus) (Multiple Brands)

This is what has happened to Toyota. They became a leader, got greedy and blew it with their quality issues.

The same thing could play out in the social media space. You never know. The cloner could become big quickly. From what I’m seeing, Facebook is going to face major challenges in the next few years. Google+ is not going away and regional competitors like vkontkte are going to eat away the share.

The problem with Russia (I’m Serbian and so I do understand their culture + can read some of Russian) is that they don’t have enough entrepreneur education when you compare them to Silicon Valley.

So, they have to imitate for a while. But I wouldn’t count them out just like the Big Three had done with Japanese auto manufacturers. Russians are highly technical folks. I’ve known a few.