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Weibo takes down Instagram imitator Oasis amid plagiarism accusations

Written by Wency Chen Published on   1 min read

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It’s unclear whether the shortlived app will be relaunched.

Oasis, a photo-sharing app developed by Chinese microblogging service Weibo, vanished from Apple’s Chinese app store on Wednesday afternoon in the wake of heated online charges over the Instagram copycat’s allegedly plagiarized logo.

A post on Weibo compared Oasis’s logo to an image South Korean design Studio Fnt created for Ulju Mountain Film Festival in 2015. The two are strikingly similar.

“Weibo’s new social media app Oasis / Korean Studio Fnt’s visual design for 2015 UIju Mountain Film Festival,” a Weibo user posted today, tagging Oasis’s official account and Weibo CEO. Source: Weibo

Wang Gaofei, Weibo CEO, responded to this post, commenting “Noticed, (the app) has been taken off.”

“Noticed, (the app) has been taken off,” Weibo CEO Wang commented below soon afterwards. Source: Weibo

Oasis – a hybrid of Instagram and Chinese social e-commerce site Xiaohongshu – allows users to edit and upload photos or videos sorted by tags and locations.

Earlier this week, Alibaba-backed social media company Weibo launched the app in an invitation-only mode, as it seeks new sources of growth. Targeting younger generations, Oasis is Weibo’s latest effort to compete with China’s newly minted hyper-popular social media verticals, such as Xiaohongshu and Douyin (known as Tik Tok outside China); both have been luring Weibo users.

Before being taken down, Oasis rocketed up to second in Apple’s top free rankings in China.

It’s unclear yet when Weibo will relaunch the app.

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