Sk*rt is a new (well, since may 07) social bookmarking site branded as a “Digg for women,” allowing users to submit, rate, and comment stories & links in a variety of categories. It definitely has it’s own bright, welcoming feel, as opposed to more tech-heavy sites like Digg, Slashdot, etc.

An interesting point is that Sk*rt is powered by Pligg, an open source Digg clone. Leveraging existing software allowed Sk*rt to get up & running very quickly, because instead of writing a lot of software, they could instead configure & rebrand Pligg.

However, Sk*rt has to make their source code available under Pligg’s Affero license. They may not need to provide everything they’ve written, but certainly any modifications to Pligg’s codebase would need to be provided, and I wonder if they would also need to open source their Pligg template, design, and any other addons.

Once again we see software as a commodity, and at least for Sk*rt (for now), their competitive advantage isn’t their code. Instead it’s their design, branding, marketing, content, user base, financials, and management.

After all, if all that mattered were code & features, the slew of Digg & MySpace clones would have already come to the forefront.