StudiVZ

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StudiVZ, Ltd.

Type	Private
Founded	Germany (October 2005)
Founder	Ehssan Dariani & Dennis Bemmann
Headquarters	Berlin, Germany
Revenue	?
Employees	231^[1] (December 2007)
Website	www.studivz.net
Type of site	Social network
Registration	required
Available in	German, French, Italian, Polish, Spanish
Launched	November 11, 2005 (2005-11-11) (2 years ago)
Current status	active

StudiVZ is the name of a social networking platform for students, in particular college and university students in Europe, based in Berlin, Germany. The name is an abbreviation of the German expression Studentenverzeichnis or Studienverzeichnis, which means students' directory.

The service is largely comparable to other social networking sites. StudiVZ claims to be one of the biggest social networks in Europe, with reportedly about ten million members as of April 2008,^[1] mostly in German-speaking countries Germany, Switzerland and Austria.

1 History
2 Features
3 Criticism
4 External links
5 References

[edit] History

The network was launched in October 2005 by two students from Berlin, Ehssan Dariani and Dennis Bemmann,^[1] but in the meantime has collected an undisclosed sum of investments by, among others, the media group Holtzbrinck and the Samwer brothers, founders of the ringtone vendor Jamba!. In fall 2006, similar services have been launched in France (StudiQG), Italy (StudiLN), Spain (EstudiLN), and Poland (StudentIX). In February 2007, SchülerVZ, another version especially for high school students with reportedly almost three million members, was launched.^[1]

In January 2007, StudiVZ was sold to one of its investors, Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck, a German publishing group which owns publishing companies worldwide, without any official figures given. Speculations vary from 20 to "over 100 million euros". In February 2008 another version for people who are not students was launched. It is called meinVZ.

[edit] Features

StudiVZ provides several features for its members. Students are able to keep and maintain a personal page containing information about their name, age, study subjects, interests, courses and group memberships within StudiVZ. They have the option to upload photographs on their personal pages. Through the search function, former classmates, fellow students, learning partners, or people with the same interests can be found. The latter are often organized in groups within StudiVZ. These groups have their own pages and a discussion forum open to group members. Additionally, StudiVZ provides a private messaging service for its members, including a birthday reminder for people on their friends list.

The German Blogospher says that StudiVZ has the greatest server cluster in Europe after Google in London and that the whole page uses only one database for all requests.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Criticism

The site's most common criticism is its astounding similarity to Facebook and Dariani admits that it is based on it. Except from some additional features such as seeing who most recently visited one's profile, the differences are in name only to be strictly German. Facebook's "poke" has been named "gruscheln" for example.^[2] Some of the error messages reveal that one of the folders on the site is called "Fakebook", indicating that the developers were well aware of the similarities.^[3]

In early November 2006, StudiVZ gained some notoriety outside its realm and also in English-speaking countries when the word was at times listed as the most popular search term on Technorati, even eclipsing former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld who had just resigned from office. This followed a couple of discussions and speculations which the company had to face in the German blogosphere, mainly about issues such as server performance, questions of privacy, internationalization, or publicity gaffes by the inexperienced team of founders.

The whole discussion culminated when some blogs published or made reference to an invitation card and accompanying website, voelkischer-beobachter.de and voelkischerbeobachter.de, distributed by one of the founders, Ehssan Dariani. The invitation was purportedly meant as a satire, but as it was modelled on the Völkischer Beobachter, the propaganda newspaper of the Nazi movement, many people took offense and criticized Dariani.

Some bloggers also published critical accounts and speculations about the company's business practices, claiming they included spamming, cybersquatting, and over-reliance on the enthusiasm of volunteers. In the meantime, the company has tried to answer some of the criticism, which nevertheless continues unabated. Dariani withdrew from management, but entered the directorate.^[4]

In February 2007, hackers broke into StudiVZ and stole numerous profiles including passwords and email addresses. As a result, the passwords of every member were reset.^[5]

Recently, studiVZ was criticized for the provocative contents of a campaign of viral videos. Reportedly, one of three particular videos, for example, shows a gang that murders a vegetarian and feeds him to pigs.^[6]