Facebook may be the world’s largest and fastest growing social network, but apparently Germany remains a tough market to crack for the company. The site 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 tool), StudiVZ boasts a membership of over 10 million, making it the largest social network in the German-speaking world. Facebook has been available in German since March of this year and reportedly grew by just 200,000 members since then. Comscore numbers suggest that number might be higher (see below).
Even assuming StudiVZ doesn’t get anymore new users, it would take Facebook over 20 years to catch up at this rate of growth. In Germany (where I hail from), organic growth doesn’t seem to be an option for the company and it seems Facebook understood that reality: After taking action in July (when StudiVZ was sued for infringing Facebook’s “look, feel, features and services”), Facebook is now taking another (quite unusual) stab at its clone by partnering up with Smaboo, a Zurich-based promotion agency.
On its web site, Smaboo is currently calling for so-called Facebook “ambassadors” who will help organize Facebook parties in Berlin and Munich. In October, the first 200 German ambassadors will be invited to a kickoff event and later engage in a “Berlin vs. Munich battle” to decide which city rules by recruiting more new Facebook members. (The German capital has a population of 3.5 million, while there are about 1.35 million inhabitants in Munich). Smaboo says ambassadors can win non-cash prizes such as iPhones, Wiis or an internship at Facebook’s HQ in Palo Alto. All they need to do is rate their determination to recommend a Facebook membership to their friends on a scale from 1 to 10 and state what they like about the site. Smaboo claims in the company blog it’s the first time Facebook is running a campaign of this kind.
What’s almost as noteworthy as the campaign itself is that this user-acquisition strategy is actually a clone of the one StudiVZ pursued during its early days: In 2005/2006, StudiVZ identified particularly enthusiastic users on their site and recruited them as so-called campus captains (StudiVZ means “university student directory” in German), evangelists who actively approached fellow university students to get them to sign up.
Although both the Facebook and StudiVZ initiatives are based on the idea of human-powered and offline viral growth, there are a number of differences: The German site never revealed the exact number of campus captains but said they never received any kind of payment for their work (apart from StudiVZ swag). In addition, Facebook’s ambassador program has an artifical flavor to it, with an outside party running a professionally organized campaign. Also, in the course of imitating Facebook’s success story, StudiVZ limited its platform population strategy to universities before opening up to the general public at a later time (Smaboo asks for the name of the university the applicants attend but doesn’t verify the given information at the time of submission).
Facebook saw its number of unique visitors in Germany jump from 545,000 last March to 1.8 million in August this year (a 224 percent increase, according to comScore). During that same time period, StudiVZ grew from 6.5million uniques to 13.7 million (a 110 percent increase). Facebook still trails far behind. Will this locally limited experiment (which might be repeated in other cities and even countries) lead to a significant jump in Facebook’s German user base in the months to come?
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It’s amazing to see how Fb is trying to capture the world audience, not just here in the US. Growing too much too quickly?
I guess FB will have a hard time catching up in Germany - they’ve entered the market too late. I don’t think the majority of StudiVZ users wants to maintain two networks.
this perfect .
maybe this is true
FB isn’t yet growing into mainstream in Germany yet and that’s good: you can really use it to stay in touch with people who travel a lot, use it for business purposes or who only want to catch up with the life style young Germans admire most in the world: the American (how we see it). FB isn’t growing that much because of other networks that are widely used: xing and linkedin - there you have a filter of quality we miss at studivz and myspace.
Non-computer driven Internet Marketing. It cracks me up that this is the best direct marketing tool they could find. I bet it is effective.
Facebook youth!
Sounds like propoganda to me. I hear Facebook is building missiles to hit StudiVZ headquarters.
I also hear it!! true
That is pretty crazy… some markets are better left alone. Is Germany’s market really that lucrative? Would it take more money to try to attract these users than having them onboard anyway?
Germany’s market is really big, powerful and rich. Be sure about it without doubt. Facebook knows it very well.
pretty much 100 M german speaking people in Europe what is almost 15 % of the european popolution, if that isn’t attractive - I don’t know!
Whys is this news. Facebook did the same thing in Greece and Cyprus. Exact same approach…organized, in conjunction with a PR company, and totally artificial. Their is nothing, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, viral about Facebook’s growth. It cracks me up that people think Facebook is a word of mouth phenom. What does everyone think the 300 million in finding goes towards? Let’s hope the Germans are smarter than their European counterparts, not to fall for a PR stunt.
Social Networking? *yawns*
Waste of money - stickiness is too strong - other major networks like http://www.wer-kennt-wen.de have a strong organic growth and everybody is pretty much sick of all social-network pluralism especially daily news about facebook on spiegel.de (a German newsmag) - at last company s. is not working effectively from what I have heard and seen here in Germany - so spend the money to invite all facebook members to have a cup of coffee or some ice.cream - too late is too late!!!
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To buy into and later integrate 2-3 German social networks with organic growth (like http://www.lokalisten.de and http://www.wer-kennt-wen.de) would probably have been more effective in the long run.
I think smaboo is doing a great job helping FB kick studivz out of the german websphere …
I am german and I use both sites…studivz is so borring and a damn cheap copy of facebook. No updates and real changes in the last few month (almost a year!) on studivz, I have the feeling people in the HQ in Berlin are sleeping…or I don’t know. If you want to be in a real social community and you want to meet friends from overseas, or just keeo in touch with them - YOU HAVE TO BE ON FACEBOOK. That’s why I believe in long termn, FB will make it!
The Google Trends chart is wrong. The URL of studiVZ is studiVZ.net and not .de.
With warm greetings from Germany,
Sebastian
PS: and the german facebook users are redirected to facebook.com, even if the type in facebook.de. So it’s much better to choose facebook.com and region “germany” for the chart.
Smaboo is an amazing concept, why not report on this startup Serkan ?
G.
I like the idea of having offline social events supplement ONLINE social networks. It’s kind of backwards from the way it is suppsoed to work, but so be it!
basically smaboo seems like an affiliate network taken offline. very interesting to see what those guys will be up to..
AS we are also to infected by the studivz virus and everyone was asking me aroun 1,5 yeas ago whey are you on facebook - they are all now also to coming to facdebook around the last 2 Month around 20 Persons from my “REal Freinds” subscribe new to facebook - so it looks like it will start here in German spoken lands also too that people are changing because - this studivz is realy….
i agree to andee. studivz is outdated, fb rocks. all my friends are comming to fb even if it’s more complicated to use.