I've said it before and I'll say it again - pligg.com has the potential to easily out do corank because it has a much greater traffic flow. It would not be an imitation either, since pligg was developed much before corank, and independently of it. Making a hosted on-site version is both a logical progression, and a necessity for the continuation growth of pligg itself in my opinion.
I am sure a lot of users come here and are unable to use pligg because they don't have the required knowledge. It will strengthen the community to offer easy to use hosted services - integrated with the main site, these forums etc.
Pligg will not remain an imitation of digg. It will evolve beyond it, both in terms of development and the community. I'm on a mission to help achieve this over the summer at pligg.com
