German Facebook Clone Sells for €100 million

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1. Allen Stern
   

   January 3rd, 2007 at 2:14 pm

   Thanks for the link Mike… just to make it an even better price.. here is the conversion to Japanese Yen:
   15,712,909,113

   That’s FIFTEEN BILLION YEN!!!

2. Tom
   

   January 3rd, 2007 at 2:16 pm

   Why think of new ideas when you can take successful US ones and replicate them in your own market?

   I’m moving to Germany to start a clone of Google. Oh, wait…

3. Tom
   

   January 3rd, 2007 at 2:18 pm

   Allen,

   I’m pretty sure I’m a millionaire in Japan.

4. Don Wilson
   

   January 3rd, 2007 at 2:19 pm

   Wow, what a ripoff of facebook.

5. Beatbox
   

   January 3rd, 2007 at 2:20 pm

   Anyone else having trouble accessing GigaOm.com?

6. home
   

   January 3rd, 2007 at 2:25 pm

   Hardcore facebook rip-off. Hmmmm, i’ll just search the world for tech ideas to import to the US.

7. Avi
   

   January 3rd, 2007 at 2:44 pm

   Yeah, that really pisses me off. That site is a replica of Facebook, and in an ugly red. They do not deserve one cent of that price, but I’m sure the media company that bought it will end up losing money on the deal - well maybe I’m not sure, but I hope. And I’m not saying that they stole the idea - I tend to think ideas are worth nothing - it’s all implementation. And that’s what they stole from facebook, the implementation of a social network for college students and that sucks.

8. Andrew
   

   January 3rd, 2007 at 2:46 pm

   The main page looks almost exactly the same…. Yet another get rich quick scheme that actually worked….

9. jj
   

   January 3rd, 2007 at 2:50 pm

   How the hell did they get away with ripping off the ENTIRE freaking design? Insane… It looks the same!!

10. thomas marban
    

    January 3rd, 2007 at 2:50 pm

    interesting, esp. because of their recent PR & tech desasters. funny to see the samwer brothers cashing up once more.

11. ginchy
    

    January 3rd, 2007 at 3:03 pm

    Arbeit Macht Hot Co-eds.

12. Sascha
    

    January 3rd, 2007 at 3:14 pm

    Michael, one quick correction. I read the German Spiegel article and it says that the price is UP TO 100 million Euro, Holtzbrinck did not actually confirm the amount, and one of the representatives of StudiVZ said in a statement that the actual amount was way below 100 million.

    Sascha

13. Klaus
    

    January 3rd, 2007 at 3:21 pm

    Michael, why Facebook and others don’t IPO? It seems the US moves to slow this time and misses out on creating a few other Ebay/Amazon/Yahoo world players.

    Facebook talked to StudiVz but couldn’t secure a takeover deal

    http://www.ftd.de/technik/medi.....46735.html

14. Sugar Nation
    

    January 3rd, 2007 at 3:30 pm

    All this from a country who welcomes David Hasslehoff to their heaving bosom…. Hey who dares wins hey? You gotta love it! lol

15. John Stoltenborg
    

    January 3rd, 2007 at 3:32 pm

    I signed up for it a few weeks ago to check out the inside, and it’s a facebook clone through and through.

    http://www.xiaonei.com, a Chinese FB ripoff, was acquired ‘at a premium’ back in October.

    ConnectU must be smiling.

16. Ines
    

    January 3rd, 2007 at 3:39 pm

    It might also be interesting to know that Holzbrinck already owns Parship.de - the biggest dating platform in Germany (expanding worldwide at the moment and with pretty expansive membership fees of ~170 Euros/six months).

    They are traditionally a publishing house - some of the biggest newspapers are published by them, such as “Die Zeit”. It seems as if they are starting to cover all age groups with their online services.

    One other interesting information is that the founders are not very media savvy - there was a big scandal a couple of months ago - one of them posted antisemitic slogans on his page and videos of girls on the toilet etc. - so my inclination was that in addition to a lot of technical problems, that they screwed up royally and that users would leave… guess I was wrong.

17. Emre Sokullu
    

    January 3rd, 2007 at 3:41 pm

    How come.. A copycat for €100M? Even the deisgn is completely the same!

18. Fashion Industry Ceo
    

    January 3rd, 2007 at 3:45 pm

    there goes facebooks german market…lol

19. Ines
    

    January 3rd, 2007 at 3:59 pm

    Confirmation on StudiVZ blog: http://blog.studivz.net/?p=110 (sorry it’s in German).

20. Jeff
    

    January 3rd, 2007 at 4:04 pm

    Ironic that so many people would cry fowl on a facebook rip-off, considering Zuckerberg is currently in litigation with former classmates for ripping off their idea…

21. Josh
    

    January 3rd, 2007 at 4:12 pm

    Unfortunately, this will probably encourage more copycats. More and more people will bloat this sector.

    Hell, I might jump in. Who is with me?

22. Anif™
    

    January 3rd, 2007 at 4:23 pm

    Josh, I’m already thinking of what can be duplicated now, if I even get the time to…..time to start surfing international locales for ideas.

23. Kulveer Taggar
    

    January 3rd, 2007 at 5:28 pm

    Incredible, I mentioned this site in a blog post on Tuesday, and now they have been bought out?! Especially after they did the same trick with Alando.de.

    I’m telling you, innovation is overrated. But hey, arbitrage improves the market for all eh?

24. Andreas Dittes
    

    January 3rd, 2007 at 5:46 pm

    according to the financial times germany its 85 million € splittet into a 50m direct and some more depending on some goals. so its not that 100m package most bloggers talking about.

    holtzbrinck already bought 15% of studivz for about 2m € a few months ago, so holtzbrinck-ventures already owned a part it.

25. permanent hater
    

    January 3rd, 2007 at 6:56 pm

    WTF! This site should have been sent a cease & desist LOOOONG time ago. This is totally ridiculous. Even some of the HTML is the same on both sites!

26. Eric Ni
    

    January 3rd, 2007 at 6:58 pm

    I commend Studiviz for taking notice of the trends in America and replicating it in other markets. It’s not like facebook didn’t have the money to do the same thing, but instead it just sat on its butt and let everyone else take leadership in various countries. How hard is it to translate the same model into another language, you might have to account for certain cultural differences, but launching the “original” facebook would have been better than launching nothing. They decided they didn’t want the other markets, so that was their decision to make. Don’t criticize Studiviz for doing so, and doing it legally.

27. Drama 2.0
    

    January 4th, 2007 at 1:01 am

    Eric Ni: you hit the nail on the head. Facebook is in a bad predicament right now. To justify the valuation it’s seeking, it needs to expand, but other markets (like high school and professionals) are already dominated by other social networks that already have critical mass and network effects, and the international markets were taken by copycats before Facebook made a move. They had the money, reuptation and connections to partner up to expand internationally but they, for whatever reason, didn’t. They might very well have had the $2 billion they were apparently seeking if they had gone global early. I have heard a lot of rumors about Facebook’s arrogance when it comes to dealmaking, and if this is accurate, they might have felt too secure or too proud to partner to launch in other countries. I suppose the story about Zuckerburg not making himself available to do major business deals on the weekend is a perfect example of arrogance. Bottom line is that if you snooze, you lose.

28. David
    

    January 4th, 2007 at 3:48 am

    @ Kulveer Taggar
    “Incredible, I mentioned this site in a blog post on Tuesday, and now they have been bought out?! Especially after they did the same trick with Alando.de.”

    I have to correct you. The founders of alando.de and jamba (the samwers brothers) are not the founders of the StudiVZ. They just invested money in this project.

    Copying ideas isn’t a new invention. E.g. u.s. movies copied from european/asian movies (The Departed = Internal Affairs(jap.))
    But they didn’t only copy the idea, they copied the design, too. That was a little bit barefaced i must admit. But I don’t think they can’t change it now that everyone is used to the design.
    All the user data should be save and stay within StudiVZ, Ehssan Dariani the founder of StudiVz says, so I wonder how Holtzbrinck will make money with this project. Not only with simple Ads I guess?

29. Holger Eilhard
    

    January 4th, 2007 at 4:00 am

    According to heise / “Die Welt” citing Konstantin Urban CEO of Holtzbrinck it was over 50 million but way less than 100 million. Source: http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/83150

30. CBS
    

    January 4th, 2007 at 7:22 am

    As Financial Times Germany reported, Holtzbrinck Networks GmbH (not Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH) pays up to 85 mio euros, 50 mio directly to the founders.

31. Hanno
    

    January 4th, 2007 at 8:21 am

    actually the google translation isn’t really that bad, made me laugh (i’m german)
    anyway, i’ve been using facebook for a long time as i have lots of us-friends and just recently heard of studivz and found it funny how they pretty much copied everything, but hey, so what, the market is there, facebook hadn’t made a move, so studivz just did it.
    google, for example, quickly expanded in EVERY country and now dominates the world, that’s how you have to do it

32. oliver gassner
    

    January 5th, 2007 at 5:13 am

    If US-Ventures did early internationalization (as I just 2 days ago discovered e.g. adify did) they would not have to face clones.

    I once talked to a customer of mine who plans a ‘copy’ why he does not offer the US venture localization services instead.

    The said: “US ventues won’t even return e-mail or calls. They want to see that you are successful in your own market - then they will buy you.”

    So I had to modify my views on copy-cats.

    Copying html and CSS is another matter. Let’s just hope no source code changed hands

    StudiVZ had been under heavy fire from bloggers for weeks for the behaviour of it’s ceo and security lapses. Let’s see if the new owner can fix this - with the same management team…

33. Sushil Raghav
    

    January 7th, 2007 at 2:15 am

    I also heard this news about facebook clone sell and so i have designed & developed a facebook clone and looking for some serious buyers.

    Anyone who is interested in buying this facebook clone can contact me at yahoo/skype messenger, my ID is “sushilraghav”

    I have also developed myspace clone & friendster clones so buyers for these clones will also be entertained.

    Sushil Raghav
    sushil.raghav@gmail.com

34. bob
    

    January 11th, 2007 at 6:04 am

    StudiQG is quite popular in france, great website. Facebook clones are better.

    http://www.studiqg.fr