Wer-kennt-wen.de, one of Germany’s largest social networks, has been acquired by The RTL Group, one of Europe’s largest media conglomerates. RTL reportedly bought the remaining 51 percent of the company (RTL already owned 49 percent of the company).
WKW currently has 5.5 million members. WKW’s founders, Fabian Jager and Patrick Ohler, will be staying at the social network.
The story broke on Netzwertig.com. Here’s the translated version.
WKW has been likened to a “German MySpace”, though it doesn’t seem to have blatantly ripped off the social networking giant, which is more than some of its competitors can say. German startups have been notorious for copying their American predecessors, the most notable of which is StudiVZ, which Facebook has filed suit against for an infringement of Facebook’s “look, feel, features and services”. As of November 2008, StudiVZ had 12 million users.
Well, RTL was already an investor holding 49% of wkw (from the “about page” of their website)…so not really breaking news…
Either someone didn’t RTFA or techcrunch has started patching their posts ad-hoc.
Now, they did their homework and changed the article…
Okay, I know Techcrunch likes twitter, but come on … a two sentence article?
http://smartbab...xy.blogspot.com
it was a call option for RTL – they signed the deal in early 2008 but just took over 49 % in 2008. After they ( WKW) matched the Milesstones it was clear they would buy it. Growth of 4 Mio Users in 2008!
See http://www.alexa.com
Btw. Bertelsmann owns 89% of RTL Group.
Congrats on the sale und liebe Guresse in die Heimat.
@peterurban
WKW is not a German MySpace … thats bullshit. It´s just another big social network. If you want to bullying german startups, then do it at least right.
Uhmmm…. MySpace is a big social network buddy.
The only relevant German service I’d call a blatant rip-off actually is StudiVZ.
Sure, there are other start-ups which copied some ideas of US companies as well and improved or customised them for the German market.
However, that’s just how start-up businesses work everywhere: You find a good product or service and thinking ‘Well, there is one or two things I’d like to improve about that.’ you start building something new upon an already existing concepts.
Apparently Bjoern doesn’t know what is going on. Just an example of the top of my head… Geni.com and Verwandt.de …….. Blatant rip-off!
And, sorry, stealing someone else’s concept, style sheet, design, layout, and function is not simply being inspired and growing a competitive environment. You can’t just copy someone’s book and change the names of characters and call it your own.
I didn’t say that stealing someone else’s concept and design is alright.
I just had another quick look at geni.com and verwandt.de.
Admittedly, those two services do exactly the same thing. However, is geni.com available in German? I don’t think so. So, there’s already one thing that verwandt improved upon.
In contrast to StudiVZ vs. Facebook, the design of verwandt.de is far from being a mere rip-off of geni.com.
Finally, saying that another nice-looking genealogy apart from geni.com is a rip-off would be tantamount to saying WordPress is a rip-off of Serendipity or vice versa just because the two do exactly the same thing.
LOL, have to agree. Just a plain copy. StudiVZ at least changed the colors. Does anybody have more examples?
StudiVZ was really a rather blatant copy of Facebook, but saying the same for wer-kennt-wen and MySpace is pretty far fetched and I can understand the angry reaction of Melle. Who would wanna copy MySpace anyways?
) and I hope there are more to come because I’m a big fan of American blogging culture.
Using the word ‘notorious’ in this context is a bit over the top. Everybody copies American ideas when it comes to the Web and Media in general because that’s where the innovations come from. It’s an area where Americans are ahead of the curve. Garman car makers on the other hand bring out lots new technologies, say ABS or ESC, which are then copied by American and Japanese car makers. This does not make them notorious copycats, they just follow the innovation. It’s a good thing.
It’s nice that you quote Netzwertig though, which is the hottest German Tech Blog in my opinion (a blatant copy of Tech Crunch
You comparision fails in my opinion. Studivz copying Facebook (and other german startups aswell) is more like the chinese car makers who copy germany cars 1:1 (only the looks of course) and put their badge on it.
Thats not “following innovation” thats “hoping to be successfull with stuff other have achieved”
Facebook failed to penetrate the market in Germany at the right time. What should the German internet community do then ? Wait and say ‘oh no, social networks are not for us’ ?
Everyone talks about ‘connecting your friends’ but a huge, tightly-knit network of people in Germany were not tied in enough with the Facebook crowd to all become friends of other Facebook users. So there’s the chance. A big strongly-connected group of people willing to try something else.
99% of the value of social networks is not so much the layout or set of features but the number of your friends on that platform. So I think, copying the user base would be a rip of, but not copying the layout.
erm, yeah, I, and everybody here, agrees that StudiVZ is a rip off of Facebook. Do you have more examples?
Calling wer-kennt-wen a copy of MySpace, however, is dumb and like saying Spiegel is a copy of Newsweek. Thas’t what the comparison referred to.
The StudiVZ guys got nearly 100 Million (Euro) for their blatant copy and are most probably fed grapes by hula girls in the Caribbean right now. So copying American startups seems like a good idea…
@Fritz, Dawanda is a blatant copy of Etsy
Just how Pownce was a copy of Twitter, Android a copy of the iPhone, or Windows may or may not be a copy of OSX. I don’t see where you get the “blatant” from.
Copying the design like StudiVZ did is impertinent, but “copying” an idea is not.
People focus too much on the concept of an idea. Ideas are almost worthless. They always build to 95% on someone else’s work and you can always be sure that someone else already had an idea so similar to yours that the very same people here would call it a copy.
It’s the implementation that counts.
Just recently joined wer-kennt-wen. Surprised anyone would compare it to MySpace, and certainly not to Facebook. Doesn’t have the variety of applications they offer — certainly not compared Facebook. I don’t use MySpace much, so less certain in that regard. At this point, wer-kennt-wen seems quite simple in terms of applications/functions. Or have I missed something?
tung qa po bani a jini mir
heheheheh