Comments on: German Facebook Clone Sells for €100 million

By: Germany’s Facebook cloner made €10m – but isn’t happy

Germany’s Facebook cloner made €10m – but isn’t happy — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 17:18:34 +0000

[...] sum but Holtzbrinck finally got StudiVZ for €85 million, although TechCrunch firstly reported €100 million. Dariani’s mum was proud and cried when she saw his bank statement, but nevertheless he [...]

By: khalid

khalid — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 11:39:09 +0000

thank you . . .

By: Hits Singapore » Blog Archive » Facebook Recruits Street Troops To Grow in Germany

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 08:35:23 +0000

[...] is just ranked 19th on Alexa’s Top 100 list for this country, ten positions behind StudiVZ, its local clone. While Facebook currently has a German user base of 800,000 (according to the site’s ad placement [...]

By: Facebook Recruits Street Troops To Grow in Germany

Facebook Recruits Street Troops To Grow in Germany — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 18:59:35 +0000

By: Alman internetinde olup bitenler | Webrazzi

Alman internetinde olup bitenler | Webrazzi — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:45:05 +0000

[...] (Buna iyi bir örnek, Facebook’un ilk çıktığı zamanının klonu olan ve geçen yıl 100 milyon euro’ya satılan [...]

By: Inhaltsübersicht zur Klageschrift | mehrblog.net

Inhaltsübersicht zur Klageschrift | mehrblog.net — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 12:25:35 +0000

[...] 86 Ein TechCrunch Artikel [...]

By: MFG.com Raises $26 Million From Fidelity Ventures, Goes After Alibaba

MFG.com Raises $26 Million From Fidelity Ventures, Goes After Alibaba — Sat, 17 May 2008 02:14:12 +0000

[...] Bezos put in some more money along with the German Samwer brothers (who founded Alando, Jamba, and invested in Studivz) in a $4 million round in January, 2007. Now, Free has raised another $26 million, nearly all of it [...]

By: An Englishman snob | Nicki Brøchner

An Englishman snob | Nicki Brøchner — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 20:31:45 +0000

[...] German. This is not the first time that TechCrunch is portraying these web clones, they wrote about StudiVZ and [...]

By: Former CEO of Yahoo! China Launching An Asian Facebook Competitor/Replica Called Yiqi

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 03:28:59 +0000

[...] has been replicated several times before too. StudiVZ, a German clone of Facebook was acquired for €100 million in January 2007. And in October 2006, Oak Pacific acquired Xiaonei, another Chinese version of [...]

By: Web 2.0 in Germany: Copy/Paste Innovation or more?

Web 2.0 in Germany: Copy/Paste Innovation or more? — Tue, 15 May 2007 00:31:01 +0000

[...] networks among students. In January of this year, Germany had its mini-YouTube moment when StudiVZ sold for €85M ($100M) to the German media conglomerate Holtzbrinck [...]

By: bob

bob — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 14:04:25 +0000

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

http://www.studiqg.fr

By: Web 2.0 » Blog Archive » Studentix - polski facebook?

Web 2.0 » Blog Archive » Studentix - polski facebook? — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 15:55:24 +0000

[...] Rzeczywiście – o sprawie pisał też TechCrunch – nie było tam jednak wzmianki o Polsce może dlatego, że serwis polski jest pod tą samą marką ale jednak technicznie niezależny od polskiego. Jak napisała mi Agnieszka Walorska country manager projektu: ze względów technicznych połączenie serwisów nie jest chwilowo możliwe, ale nie wykluczone, że nastąpi to w przyszłości. studentIX.pl należy do studiVZ.net, jednak w dużym stopniu jest jednostką niezależną. Jeśli chodzi o stronę techniczną, portal przygotowany jest on przez techników studiVZ. Kwestiami marketingu, komunikacji etc. zajmuje się kilkuosobowy polski team pod moim kierownictwem, złożony ze studentów i młodych absolwentów. [...]

By: Sushil Raghav

Sushil Raghav — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 10:15:33 +0000

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

By: oliver gassner

oliver gassner — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 13:13:39 +0000

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…

By: Hanno

Hanno — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 16:21:46 +0000

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

By: CBS

CBS — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 15:22:15 +0000

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.

By: Holger Eilhard

Holger Eilhard — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 12:00:13 +0000

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.heis...r/meldung/83150

By: David

David — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 11:48:39 +0000

@ 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?

By: Drama 2.0

Drama 2.0 — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 09:01:19 +0000

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.

By: Studivz…did someone say bubble?

Studivz…did someone say bubble? — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 03:32:08 +0000

[...] Michael Arrington at TechCrunch reports on the sale of German language Facebook Clone Studivz for 100 million Euros (sorry, no idea how to type the Euro symbol). The site apparently does have 1 million users who one would presume would primarily reside in Germany, but 100 Euros per user as an acquisition price? WTF? It’s not as though the entry level to these sorts of sites is particularly large, it’s easy enough to pick up a MySpace or Facebook clone script from Scriptlance for roughly $100 US, and with a bit of money and some clever marketing it’s not that hard to pick up a decent size user base….100 euros per user is crazy! Surely being a German language play as well it would also have fairly limited growth potential, unless there is something special in the back end that could see it break into non-German language markets in the future. [...]

By: Eric Ni

Eric Ni — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 02:58:24 +0000

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.

By: permanent hater

permanent hater — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 02:56:03 +0000

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!

By: Andreas Dittes

Andreas Dittes — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 01:46:34 +0000

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.

By: Kulveer Taggar

Kulveer Taggar — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 01:28:24 +0000

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?

By: Anif™

Anif™ — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 00:23:27 +0000

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.