Media News - Thursday, July 24, 2008
German “fakebook” site incurs wrath of Facebook
Ehssan Dariani, founder of German social network studiVZ, never made any secret of his admiration for Facebook, which is now suing studiVZ for copying its ideas and look. When he and two of his friends launched studiVZ in October 2005, it was modeled after the US network. In fact, studiVZ is so close to the original, the German network for students has been dubbed "fakebook". The founders of online T-shirt shop Spreadshirt provided initial funding of 5,000 euros ($7,960) and within months studiVZ turned into Europe's largest student social networking site. According to data on its website, studiVZ currently has more than 10 million members in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and continues to add hundreds of thousands of users every week. Facebook filed a complaint last Friday accusing studiVZ of copying the look, feel, features and services of Facebook, ultimately seeking to put an end to the German site. The name studiVZ is an abbreviation of "Studienverzeichnis", which means "students' directory" in German, and the site -- while it visually resembles Facebook, only in red instead of blue -- is more practical than playful in its features. Industry experts attribute some of studiVZ's success to the fact that Facebook waited too long to make its site available in foreign languages. Facebook launched a German version in March. (Reuters)
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