Here in the west, innovation and individual expression is such an ingrained ideal that it’s sometimes easy to take it for granted. Not so in Asia, where the imitation of (and often, let’s face it, the improvement upon) successful products is the sincerest form of flattery.

This is especially true when it comes to popular culture and technology.  Twitter has been so phenomenally successful that it’s now arguably equal parts both - so it’s worth taking a look at a few of the Asian clones out there.

The first thing one notices is that most of the knockoffs use the same shade of turquoise blue and the same style of font used in the original.  Again, to western eyes, the choice to copy the graphic design so closely might seem somewhat shameless, almost to the point of adding insult to injury - yet it’s just another example of the Asian mindset.

Intellectual property and copyright issues notwithstanding, the lack of ego that makes these near-exact replicas of Twitter possible is somewhat refreshing - and  sites like digu (below) demonstrate that they’re certainly keeping up with us over there - this Chinese Twitter clone features a Google Maps-powered mashup that pops up real-time geo-located balloons of posts as they occur - just like similar western sites such as twittervision.

It’s an increasingly interesting dynamic, this difference between the East and the West.

It’ll be interesting to see what digu does for an interface in the event Google does in fact pull out of the country….