Facebook Didn't Want to Sue StudiVZ
According to a report in the International Herald Tribune, Facebook tried to acquire the popular German social network StudiVZ. When those negotiations ended without a deal, Facebook decided to sue StudiVZ instead for copying Facebook's look and feel. According to the article, StudiVZ's owners, the German media company Holtzbrinck Gruppe, wanted to sell, but for far more than the $134 million it originally paid for StudiVZ in 2007.
Facebook definitely has a point when it says that StudiVZ is basically nothing more than a copy of its own service. While StudiVZ might use a different color scheme, everything else a user would see is pretty much identical, though the recent changes in Facebook's layout can't be found on StudiVZ (yet?).
Facebook's Slow International Expansion
StudiVZ came to market not long after Facebook and there is obviously no doubt that StudiVZ's founder were heavily influenced by Facebook. Today, Facebook only has about 1.2 million users in Germany while StudiVZ has about 10 times as many.
Facebook, of course, completely ignored the international market and didn't even offer sites for Germany, France, or Spain until earlier this year. This gave others a chance to acquire users, even if they had nothing more to offer than being a Facebook clone. Today, StudieVZ almost looks antiquated when compared to Facebook, yet it has a loyal user base that is not going to switch services very quickly.
Ebay Already Did It
The best parallel to this story is probably that of German auction site Alando - a blatant Ebay clone. Alando, too, quickly became more popular in Germany than Ebay and Ebay was eventually left with no other option than to just buy Alando. Suing StudiVZ is not going to make Facebook any more popular in Germany and given how slowly users migrate between social networks, Facebook's best option is probably to just pay a bit more for StudiVZ now and then reap the benefits in the long run.
Comments
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Yes it may be more rational for Facebook to bite down and buy StudiVZ, but it pains me to think about some copycats getting rich off this deal.
Posted by: Q dub
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August 8, 2008 11:23 AM
StudiVZ is part of three networks so far - the original, StudiVZ, is actually already shrinking, especially because of Facebook's fierce competition. I know many students who registered with Facebook in the recent months. A few months ago, Facebook had only 500k German members. A few months before that, Facebook had only 30k German members.
The only growing networks at the moment is the pupils' network SchuelerVZ, but Facebook has shown how they were able to grow out of their superior position in the students market.
(StudiVZ is for students, SchuelerVZ for pupils, MeinVZ for adults)
Posted by: Sebastian | August 8, 2008 1:41 PM
@Q Dub - sure it was a rip off but it's also the fault of FB for being arrogant and ignoring the non english speaking world for so long
Posted by: Ben Kepes
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August 8, 2008 1:52 PM
This suit is a very sensible thematic. It's all about copyright, a big issue in today's Web 2.0; so many applications are just a stub of popular ones, gaining earnings from their success.
In my oppinion it would be reasonable for StudiVZ to loose this suit. They copied design, functionality and got a lot of money for that. Please kick their a*.
Posted by: Stefan | August 8, 2008 3:44 PM
Frederic, this line is factually wrong: "Facebook's slow international expansion." Facebook has overtaken MySpace to be the largest social network in the world this past year. It'd be more true to say "Facebook's slow expansion in Germany" but even then the company grew something like 40 percent over the last twelve months.
Posted by: Eric Eldon | August 8, 2008 4:31 PM
@Ben Kepes
Perhaps it has nothing to do with Facebook being arrogant, but simply a lack of resources. There are many countries that want to use Facebook, but difficulty hiring quality people fluent in so many languages in a short time seems like a plausible reason as well. Either way, we can only speculate.
Posted by: Bill | August 8, 2008 6:29 PM
By the way, the founders of Alando were investors in StudiVZ and are now investors in Facebook.
Posted by: Oliver Thylmann | August 8, 2008 11:22 PM