Founder and investor Stefan Glänzer recently wrote in German newspaper FAZ, that Berlin-Mitte was “probably the world’s greatest factory to copy digital ideas”. Some well-known (and a lot of less-known) companies that copy concepts from the US actually have their offices in Berlin-Mitte.

As if we had sensed it before, aka-aki moved from Berlin-Mitte to Kreuzberg a couple of weeks ago. But honestly there has never been a role model for aka-aki. Neither when the project started as a Bluetooth Jave app, nor today. That was a risk we took, because even after many focus groups you can still be far out with the product or service you create and need to touch it up. And sometimes, certain features just happen to be similar all over the internet. And that’s ok, because sometimes there IS that special way a problem is solved best.

aka-aki (since December 2008) and Facebook (February 2010)

When we saw Facebook’s latest website update, we didn’t presume any copying. We were just amazed. The new layout looked a bit familiar. Maybe to the one that aka-aki has since December 2008? Friends online on the left… three icons top left.. Well, we wouldn’t call that copying. It’s just two companies having the same keen sense of usability! And there are still enough differences to tell us from each other. While Facebook is about your existing circle of friends, aka-aki lets you discover new people in real life. Very soon in a new playful fashion. Which will be another original idea from Berlin-Mitte.

One Response to “Is Berlin just a copy shop for digital ideas?”