Facebook Suing German Clone, StudiVZ

Yesterday Facebook filed a lawsuit against German social network, StudiVZ.  Facebook accused StudiVZ of being a knock off and for copying the look, feel, and features that Facebook has.  StudiVZ has about 10 million users and they self-describe themselves as the most successful social network in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

In November 2006, I wrote an article about how StudiVZ will be reaching 1 million users.  Ehssan Dariani, the site’s founder adminitted that StudiVZ is a Facebook replica.  “It was also clear from the get-go that we would strongly distinguish ourselves by other things, that we wanted to be original,” stated Dariani. Because the German version was successful, Dariani created an Italian version.

StudiVZ was bought out by a German media company called Georg von Holtzbrinck for a price that was close to €100 million a few months ago.

Related Links:
TechCrunch
Financial Times

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