The above chart says it all. After battling it out with local clone StudiVZ and the other social networks in the VZ networks group, Facebook has reigned supreme. Produced by Fitton & Maass Consulting, it shows that the U.S. social network has 64.4% of the market based on users who login at least once per week. StudiVZ claims just over 12% while the group as a whole sits at 32.7%. Thus Facebook… → Read More
Simfy, a sort of German equivalent to Spotify, has signed an exclusive partnership with VZ networks, Germany’s largest social network and operator of the so-called Facebook clone StudiVZ.
The deal will see VZ’s 16 million users being given access to simfy’s ad-supported and free on-demand music streaming service, which comprises a catalog of more than 6.2 million songs. In addition, simfy is… → Read More
German trade publication W&V is reporting that Holtzbrinck, one of Germany and Europe’s leading publishing groups, is shutting down their incubator “Holtzbrinck eLab”, launched in 2006.
Holtzbrinck is famous for backing some of the most successful German Internet startups and also for acquiring not so successful companies. Most notably, StudiVZ, the early Facebook clone, which it purchased… → Read More
[Germany] Two and a half years after Facebook, its German clone StudiVZ follows the US social network’s most successful move by adding support for third-party applications.
The 15.7m users of StudiVZ and its siblings MeinVZ and SchülerVZ can now play games from Plinga or Wooga, sing online Karaoke with Mikestar or order Italian food from Pizza.de. After 12 months of engineering and a trial with… → Read More
Facebook and StudiVZ have reached a settlement in the alleged plagiarism case, with the German social network operator paying Zuckerberg and co an undisclosed sum as part of the deal. Both companies will be withdrawing their respective claims both in the United States and Germany and continue to operate their business as before (statement in German).
StudiVZ and Facebook have agreed not to… → Read More
Facebook and StudiVZ have reached a settlement in the alleged plagiarism case, with the German social network operator paying Zuckerberg and co an undisclosed sum as part of the deal. Both companies will be withdrawing their respective claims both in the United States and Germany and continue to operate their business as before (statement in German).
StudiVZ and Facebook have agreed not to… → Read More
Bad news for Facebook from Germany today. Facebook has had issues with Berlin-based social network StudiVZ (“student directory” in German) for years before deciding last summer to finally sue their German clone in the US. In November, Facebook filed another suit [PDF], this time in Germany. The allegation in both cases: Intellectual property theft, with Facebook saying StudiVZ infringes on their… → Read More
A year ago we modeled out the true value of various social networks based on the idea that users in high-value online advertising markets like Japan, the UK and the U.S. were worth more (financially speaking) than those in lower value online advertising markets. Facebook had recently become the largest worldwide social network in terms of users, but based on our model MySpace was still by far the… → Read More
Nimbuzz is launching a brand new VoIP application for the iPhone / iPod Touch today, making it one of the most comprehensive communication tools for the platform available today. It took several weeks for the Dutch startup to get the app approved for the iTunes Store, but now that it’s finally there it’s well worth taking a look.
You could already make free calls to your buddy list over WiFi, but… → Read More
Holland-based IM and VoIP services provider Nimbuzz has just announced a noteworthy strategic partnership with StudiVZ, the largest social networking site in Germany famous worldwide for sporting a look closely resembling Facebook, which the Californian company to file suit over the summer.
StudiVZ will become the first in what Nimbuzz refers to as a series of international networking sites to… → Read More
Facebook may be the world’s largest and fastest growing social network, but apparently Germany remains a tough market to crack for the company. The site is just ranked 19th on Alexa’s Top 100 list for this country, 10 positions behind StudiVZ, its local clone. While Facebook currently has a German user base of an 800,000 (according to the site’s ad placement tool), StudiVZ boasts a membership… → Read More
StudiVZ, the Facebook clone (and by clone, we mean exact duplicate) in Germany, says in an email that they still havn’t received the lawsuit complaint filed by Facebook on Friday. The lawsuit claims intellectual property infringement and accuses StudiVZ of running a “knock-off” of Facebook. StudiVZ says they “cannot comment in detail” about the lawsuit since they… → Read More
Facebook is starting to pursue social networks that have copied their design or features by suing German site StudiVZ. The Financial Times has reported that Facebook filed a suit in California against the German company for what it claims is an infringement of Facebook’s “look, feel, features and services”. StudiVZ claims to have 10 million active members, and is the largest… → Read More
Is MySpace worth $3 billion, or $20 billion? It depends on how you value a user. It’s time to start comparing the big global social networks on something other than unique visitors and page views. I believe an effective way to value a particular user is based on the average Internet advertising spend per person in the country they live in. The higher the spend, the more value the social… → Read More
Last week we reported on Frazr, one of Germany’s many Twitter clones (if you’re eager for more side-by-side comparisons, see Sloggen, Wamadu, Faybl or 1you, which all launched in March or April). Frazr is symptomatic for the state of Web 2.0 in Germany and to get a better understanding for the many international developments, this post starts a series of regional profiles on Web 2.0 around the… → Read More
German Facebook clone Studivz has been sold to one of its investors, Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH, a German publishing group, for €100 million (about $132 million). Other investors of Studivz include the Samwer brothers, founders of ringtone company Jamba (sold for €270M) and Alando (sold to eBay for €43M in 1999). The story broke on German news site Spiegel. See here for a beautifully useless… → Read More
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