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 social network in the German-speaking world, covering Germany, Belgium, Austria and Switzerland. The network is actually comprised of three different sites, each one a separate social network aimed at different segments of the market. StudiVZ.net is the classic site for college-aged students, SchuelerVZ.net is for high school students and MeinVZ.net is for older adults (these three networks were very hard to decipher in German when I attempted to sign up).
Facebook does seem to have a claim here, as the German site looks like nothing more than Facebook in red and translated in German. Everything from the first public page to the sign-up page and the profile pages look eerily similar to the US-based social network. StudiVZ was acquired earlier this year by the German media group Georg von Holtzbrinck, with an acquisition price in the €100M range. They always say you should sue where the money is, and Facebook has certainly found a pile of it by targeting Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck.
Disclaimer: This is not the real Mark Zuckerberg profile in StudiVZ (at least we don’t think so).
They open sourced most of their platform — exactly what else were they expecting to happen?
Stinky StudVZ cloned Facebook years before that.
shouldn’t Facebook also sue MySpace for copying their UI??? The new MySpace user interface REALLY looks like Facebook’s don’t you think?
No, absolutely not. New Myspace UI is gradient-ugly. Please show me one gradient on Facebook.
Facebook opened the code of the F8 platform, not of the core Facebook product.
Also, with opening the code, they didn’t grant licenses for the design and graphics.
So even if you were right, which you aren’t (because Facebook opened something different just recently, whereas StudiVZ is around several years already), it wouldn’t have been right.
Studivz should just tell them to fuck off. They have no reason to show up in Cali court, I doubt they do any business in California, let alone United States.
Holzbrinck, the company that bought StudiVZ, operates in the United States.
StudiVZ deserves to be sued. They didn’t add anything new, they really simply copied the features.
The code is internally known as “fakebook”, the features, like “poking”, even if named differently in German, listen to the same names in the back-end. Actually, the stylesheet of StudiVZ itself is really a copy of Facebook’s stylesheet (before they changed the design about a year ago), with just the colors and background graphics changed.
StudiVZ can tell them to “fuck off”. They’ll pay for their pretty clear infringement, though.
And again: Holzbrinck, which StudiVZ is now a subsidiary of, IS doing business in the US.
We also have a Dutch social network (hyves.nl) and has sometimes even more pageviews a day than Google (well, in Holland).
BTW, ‘Poking’ is 1-on-1 translated to Dutch on Hyves (’tikken’).
If that’s the case they have many more social networking sites who they can sue. Why bother though, I fail to understand. It’s not like anyone is going to mistake these sites for Facebook.
Why don’t you actually look at the site and then say no one will confuse it for facebook. They changed the logo and the colors, but other than that, the design and layout is a pixel for pixel rip off.
Can they sue the company, since they are located in Berlin?
Why don’t they sue Xiaonei (www.xiaonei.com) - at least, StudiVz changed the theme color.
The parent company seems to have assets/do business in the US. I wonder if they will be able to go after these assets. If not, the suit in California seems like a waste of money. Perhaps it is just a PR play?
Hey, Facebook just found it’s revenue model!
The i18n market~~~?
What a dumb DUMB move… silicon valley-based companies should never forget 99,999% of their users don’t even REALISE there is a real company behind their favorite website, and they should do everything to never have to show this face to the public… for instance by suing another company.
Zuckerberg is a scum, himself’s just stolen the idea.
Yeah, Techcrunch Team. Now, you have the german StudiVZ Fanboys on your site, screaming things like “fu** of facebook” and so on… we already know that in german blogs, when studivz is criticized.
take a look at this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/b.....5/sizes/o/
its a original screenshot of the first studivz version.
There are copycats all over the world
Just because there are others, doesn’t make it alright.
Mark Zuckerberg has a StudiVZ profile? Really? Call me skeptical I guess.
I am a member of facebook and a member of StudiVZ as well since I am a German student. From my point of view this case is hilarious.
StudiVZ was founded in 2006 and some of the facebook guys even travelled to Germany in 2006 to meet leading members of StudiVZ apparently with thoughts to buy it or whatever but they were aware of StudiVZ back then and did nothing. Now they have noticed that they don’t have any success in Germany and they try to get rid of StudiVZ with a law suit in the USA. That is not what I would call competition.
I like Facebook but the claim that it is the same “look and feel” is just wrong. StudiVZ has no applications, they have a complety different approach to the visibility of profiles (and never had something like networls) profiles are not indexed by google etc.+ like mentioned in the posting they segmented their users to 3 sided and make special actions for high school studens (invitations only, organizing school concerts..) which differentiates the StudiVZ concept as well from the facebook “we take everybody” approach.
The most funny part: As I heard Facebook argues that StudiVZ has too many security problems and they sue it because they are afraid that people mix it up with facebook and think that facebook has security problems..well…facebook had a lot of more problems with security and privacy issues than StudiVZ in recent months so I would beg facebook to compete in a fair way and leave the decision to the users and not to a californian court.
You are dead wrong on this one: 1. how do you know for fact that Facebook approached StudiVZ 2. Facebook is super successful in Germany. Just check latest numbers 3. The screenshot above in Flickr shows that they took the code directly from Facebook.
There is definitely a case and Holtzbrinck will certainly pay. They have too many assets in the US (Scientific American…) in order to loose big time.
No, they are not successful. I talked to an executive of StudiVZ yesterday and he told me — and I already knew that before — that Facebook doesn’t reach their target group in Germany. I am a student myself. How many students I know are on Facebook? 2. How many are on StudiVZ and using it? Nearly 70. That’s a big difference that lets me know that Facebook cannot be successful in Germany, at least not with their target group.
Hmm. The screenshot says “fakebook”. How would they actually copy fb codebase they could not access without hacking their servers? So that probably didn’t happen. So fine, CSS, and HTML reverse engineering, possible. “fakebook.css” and the like could have been a coder’s joking comment on the project.
If you look at blogs, you’ll note some common features and design featrues as well. I doubt a “blogroll” is protectable intellectual property even if it may have been possible at some point to protect the name, the same is probably true for “friends lists” etc.
Sure, they were “inspired” by facebook, I think that much is obvious, sure they may have taken the inspiration a notch too far, visually. But overall, I think fb has a weak claim beyond the ‘look and feel’ which probably isn’t the top priority on their list.
So, what does this really mean - fb has decided they need to acquire StudiVZ to get on in the heavily fragmented German market (people who aren’t students are mostly on other networks, like wer-kennt-wen.de or lokalisten.de. “MeinVZ” hasn’t been able to get a big share of the non-student market either. Facebook was late to the party and they will have to pay for being late if they want to achieve a dominant market position that will allow better marketization. This is part of the sales negotiation for StudiVZ. Holtzbrinck certainly wants a good markup on the about 110m they paid for StudiVZ and facebook certainly isn’t too keen on paying that.
As a user of both networks, I find fb to be bloated but vastly superior. Privacy is an issue, as fb is a US company, though. So. I expect to see StudiVZ become a fb company rather quickly now. Hopefully that will also make profile transitions possible.
@Mithun: Those who know facebook will not mistake them, but how many Germans do know facebook? And how many know the plagiarism?
Isn’t it naive to assume that Facebook would be unknown to a German student who wants to join an online community? I’m from India, we have a Facebook rip off here called DesiMartini.
If you’re on the web you’ll know, if you don’t now, you will soon.
Did Facebook forget that they copied HarvardConnect?
So true, Zuckerberg stole most of his concept from the ConnectU guys so this is just chickens coming home to roost. It is also fairly common for sites with readily implemented “technology”. Facebook is a glorified set of web pages, the “applications” are on request invoked javascripts and flash programs, my guess is very little about the site involves the nice proprietary core code that can actually be protected via patents. Zuckerberg was prescient to see that the ConnectU idea was a first mover one and that is why he stole it…but it being so easy to reproduce explains why others can steal that from him.
whoever wrote this article doesn’t seem to know how to spell.
This is a blog not a national newspaper. TC pride themselves on bring us the headlines first, so if that means typos or bad grammar I can live with that..
That’s pathetic. Then they should also sue vkontakte.ru , one of the most popular social networking sites in Russia. Even the login screen looks exactly like Facebook (find 10 similarities), let alone the UI interface once you’re logged in.
Absolutely true, I still don’t understand what Vkontakte owners are doing not changing the interface completely now that Facebook has launched a Russian version. Do they want to be the next one in court?
article should have mentioned also that studivz was created as “fakebook” (see flicker link posted by Chris) by the samwer brothers, whose specialty is to clone US web businesses in German (e.g. ebay) - ironically, after flipping “fakebook” aka studivz, they invested some token amount in the real facebook (for bragging rights perhaps?). so now they are effectively suing their own creation for the plagiarism they committed…
When did it become illegal to copy the design of a site? If Facebook wins on those grounds that will set some major precedence. People duplicate site designs all the time.
I get the feeling there is not much justice when it comes to business law in silicon valley- its might makes right and Wilson Soncini et al. takes all.
It was particularly interesting that barely 2 months after FB became such a hype in Germany as well, StudiVZ completely changed their site to make it similar to FB and that is IMHO where the lawsuit has a claim.
Well this is funny news. I wonder what Facebook was doing for the past 3 years, as StudiVZ, the obvious clone of the site design and even some of the code combined with the massive security & privacy flaws was the number one topic in the German blogosphere for months back in 2006. One of Germany’s most influential bloggers, Don Alphonso (blogbar.de) posted several stories about the site which often swapped over into the mainstream news. Maybe TC should talk to him, I’m sure he has something to say about one of his favorite topics and can shed some light on the situation.
This being said - I don’t know what they hope to achieve through that, getting rid of competition as they pretty much failed in Germany and users aren’t migrating to facebook in masses? Then again - sue the crap out of StudiVZ and Holtzbrinck for great justice, they don’t deserve any better for their ridiculous behaviour. :p
they weren’t bought for 100 million euros 3 years ago.
Its the same reason youtube wasn’t harassed till Google bought it.
Seems like facebook is now pursuing lawsuits left and right. Starting out when people are suing and you are suing others don’t seem to have the platform progress in any meaningful way.
My god, they’ve even copied Zuckerberg! Talk about wrong!
Facebook = A$%Holes. This comes from a guy who stole the idea from his buddies. What a bunch of scum bags. Why do people, and bloggers in particular, support such tools. So what it copied your design. And Zuck did not copy designs and get ideas on design from other sites? Everyday Facebook becomes more like Microsoft, without of course the ability to make money.
If that’s the case, why are they suing a single social network?
Here is a facebook clone script, just $399
http://products.agriya.com/kootali-social-network
Here is the demo
http://products.agriya.com/kootali/demo/
People can clone design as long as they don’t copy code (including html).
could be they copied the HTML…
http://www.flickr.com/photos/1...../285541845
This post needs some serious editing work. Please pay attention to grammar and spelling or hire writers whose first language is English.
Just as a side note, the three “German-speaking” countries targeted by StudiVZ are Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Belgium has three “official” languages (French, Dutch, German) however only about 1% of the current population is German-speaking.
i know most people in the west have take care much of copy cat. But i just wondering why they just sues StudiVz. Because i have seen there is so much website have take copy all things related with Face book .
is it all because some german media have buy it for 100 Million ?
Would makes sense to me that Facebook is sueing them in order to buy them at a cheaper price. Hearing the current owner is willing to sell
what is your source of information.
I think you should replace Belgium with AUSTRIA.
Lame story. There’s no iPhone in it.
What a whole lot of crap!
Why isn’t facebook getting a proper German interface - so that I dont constantly suggested to add men (sex=male) as girl friends to my profile?
Instead of trying to get unfair legal advantages by protecting something thats absolutely worth to be protected?
Read more here
http://www.doxtop.com/Browse/607106df/‘i-will-take-you-to-the-court’-facebook-sues-studivz.aspx
Well, that’s the reason why I avoided switching over to the German version at all costs… which was kind of hard to do, because the notifications about the German version were annoying the hell out of me for one or two weeks.
Oh, and I am missing Yahoo! bashing in this story!
there are 100s of social networking sites before facebook….they should all sue facebook for stealing the original idea
facebook just got lucky in tricking people to join…otherwise there is nothing new fb invented…all stolen ideas, and stolen code
In Germany StudiVZ has admonished for the same points certain websites!
Read the SPIEGEL articel: http://www.spiegel.de/unispieg.....71,00.html
Translation:
http://tinyurl.com/67nua6
studivz was a complete facebook ripoff when it started, they even had facebook CSS files in their sourcecode.
The founder went to the US in 2005 or so, saw facebook and did the exakt same thing in germany and had great success.
I would have done this way before if i was Zuckerberg.
Of course Facebook is right, its a shame what StudiVZ did. But this lawsuit … I think its mostly a PR stunt for the german press. The most StudiVZ-users don´t even know Facebook …
I live in Belgium and never heard of this StudiVZ, everyone here is using Facebook. Just a small note to correct the article. I’m a webdesigner as well and copying a layout is plain wrong. There are copyright laws and StudiVZ broke them. I have no idea where Facebook got their UI but in this case it seems StudiVZ broke the copyright law, even if they are in Berlin. What would you say when Ford copies a BMW design and sold it as it’s own design? This is the same thing.
haha, the funny thing is that studivz sues every service who has a vz in its name. mmh, and vz is short for verzeichnis, which menas directory.
i think they sue studivz because they are really large in germany and austria. its really hard to find a student which is not on studivz and some time ago they launched a new service called meinvz which is for everyone.
They aren’t that big in Austria. In Austria dominates Szene1.at which has way more Austrian users than FB, myspace or StudiVZ.
There is the Micro$oft VISTA bashing in this story
?
I can now see why people are pulling away from facebook as they become more microsoft commercial orientated,the fall of facebook is near
And there will be more.
lol@ fakebook
http://www.flickr.com/photos/1...../285541845
Does this mean Slide can sue FB for copying Top Friends?
I think MySpace can sue Slide for copying Top Friends.
Well, I’m a member on both networks. StudiVz (and all derivatives) cleary copied everything from facebook. As somone stated before, back in the days StudiVz threw error messages with files including “Facebook blah blab” not found. If I remember correctly this was only a css file but still.
The only advantage StudiVz has, it’s much faster as it’s not so bloated with js and what not.
I have nothing against making something similar but it should have at least some unique aspects or features. Not just painting everything in red.
Btw. I don’t like either of them.
http://www.techlusive.com/pics/Faceb001.PDF
Here is an authentic Facebook C&D. We never indexed their data, they just thought we did, because they assumed a lot.
If StudiVz wants more information on what happened in Facebook’s investigation of our alpha search engine Peeplr, I would be happy to help them. It may or may not help their case.
I believe there was a complete lack of due diligence where they accused us of trying to sell search indexes and index data into the facebook.com website, where as we had not indexed facebook.com as part of our social search, only websites that allow searching via robots.txt.
“They always say you should sue where the money is”
That’s always the case isn’t it.
So techcrunch to be sold ot has been sold for $30million ou kept that one quite Mr.Arrington
http://img-a4.pe.imagevz.net/p.....cfa5cc.jpg
Facebook management team. Matt, Dan, Owen.
.. and the studiVZ Founder…
There’s another funny point in this story: When StudiVZ was sold in early 2007 there were three parties at the table who wanted to buy the company: Holtzbrinck, Axel Springer (big German Publisher) and - guess who - FACEBOOK. The latter offered allegedly 5% of their shares (i.e. about 10 times the price that Holtzbrinck paid - but that’s another story). Maybe this is just kind of a late revenge for a lost deal.