I just got this news alert from Financial Times and decided to share with you. I believe this would be a good read for you, if you are thinking to ‘follow’ someone else’s ideas and make it your own.

You probably already know Facebook, a social site that connects people. This site has been in a phenomenal performance serving millions of users around the world (Yes, I have my own account there). Started at 2004, now the site is one of the most visited sites in the world.

There are many original features in Face book that are not available at other social sites. For example, you can build your own application and spread it around the community. Maybe that’s why people love Facebook.

Knowing this fact, many people try to duplicate Facebook’s success. This time, a German site is trying to ‘mimic’ Facebook, copying functions and even the fell and look of Facebook.

Well, as you can guess by now, the German site owners get sued, according to Financial Times.

So, my advice to you is: “don’t try to copy other people’s idea”. Come up with something of your own. It doesn’t have to be 100% original. You can based your idea from existing one and add a little twist to it.

Facebook itself is not a new idea. Before Facebook, there are Friendster, MySpace, etc. But it provides some small twists to differentiate itself from other sites. And those twists happened to be loved by many people.

Are your ideas based from other people’s?

There many places where you can find people or company where you can outsource tasks that are components of your online business.

Basically there are two categories for these places: FREE Market and CONTROLLED Market.

These are my own terms to simply explain the two characteristics.

1. Free Market

FREE Market is where you can make a deal with service providers without any moderation of third party. Usually, your position as a buyer is weak because there is no third party that could help you if the service provider you choose turns out to be a scammer.

This kind of market is formed based on trust of the people in the community. A tip to survive in this type of market is, don’t pay full in advance unless it is the amount of money you can lose.

The reward of using this market is that you can get service cheap. Plus, you could get a trustworthy long-term business partner.

Here are some example of this FREE Market:

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