DISQUS

AllFacebook: Facebook’s Failed Attempt at Acquiring StudiVZ

  • Massfacebooker · 1 year ago
    Apparently Facebook sued StudiVZ too in return, as this website says (German): http://www.mehrblog.net/2008/07/20/studivz-klag...
  • Facebook Spin · 1 year ago
    I am not sure about this stuff because they can only protect their IP and if they design something the same its really hard! its not a technology its just a layout.
  • Nicole Simon · 1 year ago
    You forget the market size of Germany (and which relevance those 'small' 10 million have in a market with ~80-100 million possible targets for the whole country). Germany is a language silo-ed country, meaning that most users like a complete german interface.

    If you like to compare how much studivz and their additional offerings for pupils and not students anymore users smash everything else in regard to page impressions and more, take a look at the ivw numbers - they rank consistently as top of germany. Not just in social networks - all over the board.

    [ivw numbers are independently counted by tracking pixels and are regarded *the* numbers for the german market, not to be compared with bogus numbers like alexa and co.]

    While I do not dispute that StudiVz probably is way more a real clone of FB than many other sites, it is hugely successful even without the API.

    For the german market facebook needs to behave *way* more clever than they have in the last few months or buy the competitor.

    It is also not to be underestimated how suing StudiVz will make an impression on the users: "First they tried to buy us, now they are suing my beloved social network and now finally they are trying to win me over? Not going to happen".

    Even if StudiVz needs to shut down now - I assume users will rather sign up for a new network by the same people than move over to Facebook.

    Is the German market lost for FB? Not at all. It just takes more than the "oh we are the greatest and allow you to join and worship us" attitude they have shown so far.
  • Massfacebooker · 1 year ago
    Being German and spending quiet a big share of my time there and having many people there, I think that Facebook is performing much better there than is suggested by German and international media.

    Facebook is *way* increasing its userbase especially among *hip*, urban, affluent, young people, which are the main adverrtising target. Most of my German friends do have fb and all those who have both facebook and studivz do in fact prefer facebook over studivz.

    A problem though is that the German translation of Facebook is in very bad German, maybe due to the language's complexity and that apps arent translated at all.