Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » StudiVZ

StudiVZ Has 16.6 Million Users, Facebook Has 9 Million In Germany

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 28 May 2010 14:49:10 +0000

Facebook is quickly catching up to a German replica for social networking dominance in Germany. One of the primary reasons why replicas quickly sprouted up was because Facebook did not have their website translated until late in the development phase. In this case Facebook replica StudiVZ has 16.6 million registered users across their network in Germany, while Facebook has 9 million. Overall Facebook has over 500 million users.

StudiVZ is named after the word Studentenverzeichnis (translates to students’ directory). One of the biggest problems with StudiVZ is the name of the company. Once people graduate from school, they no longer like to be considered a student. Facebook started originally as a student-focused social network, but they have broadened beyond that phase.

StudiVZ was sold to German publishing company Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH for €85 million in January 2007. Other websites in the StudiVZ network include SchülerVZ and MeinVZ.

In July 2008, it was revealed that Facebook was filing a lawsuit against StudiVZ for an infringement on the “look, feels, features, and services.” Facebook filed the lawsuit at a court in Germany and in California. The California court basically told Facebook to handle everything with the German court system.

The German court said that StudiVZ did not violate any I.P. rights held by Facebook. This happened about a year after Facebook was attempting to acquire StudiVZ, but the negotiations fell through. Facebook and StudiVZ made some sort of undisclosed settlement in order to end the conflict.

StudiVZ Paying Off Facebook To Back Off And End Legal Dispute

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 04:03:27 +0000

Facebook and German social network StudiVZ will be ending their legal battle over plagiarism. StudiVZ will be paying Facebook and undisclosed sum of money in order to have both companies withdraw their claims in the U.S. and Germany. Both companies will continue to do business as they have been doing before.

As of this past May, StudiVZ reportedly had about 13 million users in Germany whereas Facebook had about 2 million. In July 2008 Facebook filed a lawsuit against StudiVZ in California saying that they had infringed on the “look, feel, features, and services.” Facebook was even considering buying out StudiVZ but those talks fell through.

The reason why the acquisition did not take place was because Georg von Holtzbrinck, the parent company of StudiVZ was not satisfied with what Facebook had to offer. In early 2007, Georg von Holtzbrinck bought StudiVZ for $134 million.

Another lawsuit was filed in Germany around November 2008 but the County Court in Cologne ruled Facebook because their company lawyers were a bit sloppy in preparations. Facebook said that they were planning to appeal the decision made in that court. Rather than allowing the legal battle to keep going on, a settlement was made and that is that.

In Germany Facebook Has 2 Million Users, StudiVZ Has Over 13 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 14 May 2009 16:45:09 +0000

Facebook has recently taken StudiVZ to court claiming that the German social network is simply a knockoff of their own website. StudiVZ is one of the largest social networks in Germany with over 16 million users. Facebook itself has about 2 million active users in Germany. This makes Germany the country with the 18th most highest number of Facebook users.

To make matters even more interesting, StudiVZ was acquired by a larger company already for a price between €50 million-€100 million in 2007. Taking StudiVZ to court is leading people to believe that they are going to go after any other clone next. Xiaonei is the Chinese clone of Facebook.

In order to gain market share in Germany, Facebook started contests such as the German Application Contest and Facebook for Good – Germany. Facebook also hired a few ambassadors in Berlin and Munich.

[via InsideFacebook]

Facebook Suing German Clone, StudiVZ

Amit Chowdhry — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 19:01:31 +0000

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

StudiVZ, German Version of Facebook to Hit 1 Mill Users By End of November; Italian Version Following Footsteps

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 11:05:42 +0000

A Facebook replica website, StudiVZ has been seizing a large marketshare of higher education students from the European market while Facebook is dominating the U.S. market. How similar do they look? Click on the thumbnails below to find out (opens in new window):
Facebook Screenshot:
StudiVZ Screenshot:
And while I’m discussing Facebook replicas, how about I once again mention Xiaonei, a recently acquired Chinese version of Facebook that I’ve profiled from before:
Not only is Ehssan Dariani the founder of StudiVZ, but he’s also a member that likes the movie Zoolander and is a 26 year old student at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland studying economics. Dariani started StudiVZ about a year ago and now the current user base is 950,000. Dariani claims that 15,000 people are signing up with StudiVZ per day compared to Facebook’s 20,000 people signing up per day. Dariani started this company with an initial investment of 5,000 Euros at an Internet coffee shop and now has 50 people working for him.

How fast as StudiVZ grown? In July, 200,000 users had signed up and then doubled in August and then another 100,000 in September. By the end of this month, StudiVZ is expecting 1 million users to be signed up. “We want to keep the page free and support it with unobtrusive forms of advertising,” stated Dariani about future growth. “Right now, we want to concentrate on making things run smoothly, and we’ve got plenty of work on our hands already.”

Dariani is not afraid to admit that StudiVZ is a Facebook replica, but has stated “it was also clear from the get-go that we would strongly distinguish ourselves by other things, that we wanted to be original.” An example of a distinguished feature is called “gruscheln,” which is the equivalent of a Facebook “poke.” And because Dariani is not afraid to admit that his website is based off of Facebook, he gives advice to Germans complaining about finding a job. “Stop whining about having no job, or a bad job — that’s total nonsense. As far as that goes, we can learn a lot from the Americans.”

Since so many people in Europe had signed up for the German version, it appears that Dariani made a spin-off Italian version as well called studiLN. Dariani has had many problems with servers because of conflicts with telecomm companies in the past and hopes to fix these problems as the user base grows.

To display the actual growth rate, I have placed a screenshot of StudiVZ’s Alexa ranking chart from the last 6 months:

Had this been a more original product, I would have been a lot more impressed, but I give Dariani credits. I have seen other MySpace and Facebook replicas that has not seen anywhere near similar growth.

[Source: Spiegel Online]