Social Networking Watch

Facebook And StudiVZ Have Reached A Settlement

TECH CRUNCH -- Sep 10 -- Facebook and StudiVZ have reached a settlement in the alleged plagiarism case. Both companies have withdrawn their claims and will continue with business as usual. StudiVZ has agreed to pay Facebook an undisclosed amount of money to continue using its clone of Facebook's website. Facebook filed suit against StudiVZ in California in July last year, alleging that the German company had infringed on Facebook’s “look, feel, features and services. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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Facebook Throws The Book At Rival Website

DEUTSCHE WELLE -- Apr 29 -- StudiVZ, Germany’s largest market leading social-networking site with around 5.5 million registered users, is at the receiving end of legal action from the German offshoot of the social-networking site Facebook, which is a rival of StudiVZ. In an opening court hearing in Cologne on Tuesday, Facebook claimed that StudiVZ's logo and features infringed on Facebook's intellectual property rights and that StudiVZ must have obtained illegal access to Facebook's source code. One judge suggested that an independent evaluator should look at the code to determine if the source code was indeed copied. No further information was available on the status of the legal action. FULL ARTICLE @ DEUTSCHE WELLE

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5 International SN To Keep An Eye On

CNET NEWS -- Dec 18 -- It's a big world out there and Facebook and MySpace don't own it.

China: Xiaonei
Xiaonei is basically a Chinese Facebook clone.

France: Skyrock
Skyrock started as a blog in 2002, which was eventually abandoned in 2007 and turned into a social network. It was the right move.

Germany: StudiVZ
StudiVZ is, well, an almost exact replica of Facebook, but without the company's signature blue design.

Japan: Mixi
Mixi controls almost every aspect of the member's profile design and structure and it doesn't even let third-party developers deploy apps on the site.

South Korea: Cyworld
Cyworld recently launched a U.S. site in an attempt to expand globally and take Facebook and MySpace on directly.
FULL ARTICLE @ CNET NEWS

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Facebook Recruits Street Troops To Grow In Germany

TECH CRUNCH -- Sep 25 -- Germany remains a tough market to crack for Facebook. While Facebook currently has a German user base of 800,000, boasts a membership of over 10m, making it the largest SN 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. After taking action in July (when StudiVZ was sued for infringing Facebook's "look, feel, features and services"), Facebook is now taking another  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. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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Facebook And StudiVZ Battle Over Germany

INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE -- Aug 7 -- Facebook sued the German leader in social networking, StudiVZ. It contended that the company had illegally copied Facebook's "look and feel" with similar graphics and features. What Facebook did not mention, according to a former senior StudiVZ executive, was that the U.S. company had been negotiating for months to try to buy StudiVZ. Buying StudiVZ would strengthen Facebook in one of the few big Western markets in which it has not established a significant presence. Facebook has more than 132m users worldwide, according to ComScore. But StudiVZ, with 12.2m users in Germany in June, is about 10 times the size of Facebook.de, the German version of the service. FULL ARTICLE @ INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE

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Facebook Sues StudiVZ

TECH CRUNCH -- July 18 -- Facebook filed a suit in the California Supreme Court against the German company for what it claims is an infringement of Facebook's "look, feel, features and services". StudiVZ claims to have 10m active members, and is the largest social network in the German-speaking world, covering Germany, Belgium, Austria and Switzerland. Facebook does seem to have a claim here, as the German site looks like nothing more than Facebook in red and translated in German. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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Facebook Clone Bought for $132 million

GIGA OM -- Jan 3 -- StudiVZ, a German clone of Facebook was sold for 100 million Euros to Holtzbrick Verlag, a giant German publishing company. The Chinese clone of Facebook was acquired back in October 2006. StudiVZ, which claims to have a million users, had been having some serious performance problems. FULL ARTICLE @ GIGA OM