Facebook, Inc. v. Studivz, Ltd et al

Filing 141

AMENDED COMPLAINT re Docket No. 140, EXHIBITS 14 THROUGH 25 TO AMENDED COMPLAINT against all defendants. Filed byFacebook, Inc.. (Attachments: # 1 Exhibit 15, # 2 Exhibit 16, # 3 Exhibit 17, # 4 Exhibit 18, # 5 Exhibit 19, # 6 Exhibit 20, # 7 Exhibit 21, # 8 Exhibit 22, # 9 Exhibit 23, # 10 Exhibit 24, # 11 Exhibit 25)(Gray, Thomas) (Filed on 3/31/2009)

EXHIBIT 25

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Echologist.com
The Science of Making Social Networks Resonate « UN Youth Delegates and the German Youth Council StudiVZ and Facebook - Huge Data Leak(s) »

StudiVZ Encyclopedia - the most complete summary (until now)
This is a summary of articles and blogs related to StudiVZ. Introduction StudiVZ is a German-based social-network platform for university students. According to their website, it was started in October 2005 by three German students: Ehssan Dariani, Michael Brehm, Dennis Bemman (registration is needed). `StudiVZ' is the German abbreviation for StudiVerzeichnis. For an overview of the history and diversity of social networks see Yasns or Wikipedia.
Reach

According to the StudiVZ blog, 1 million users are now using StudiVZ - compared to 60.000 in June 2006 or 800.000 in October 2006 (see StudiVZ, Robert Basic, Dittes (I), Dittes (II)). They have by far surpassed their competitors such as Unister.de (see AlexaRadar, Ice-Blog, Dittes (III), see statistics on Alexa for a comparison of these two companies).With innovative ideas, such as the StudiVZ Song award they are increasingly receiving more attention from students. StudiVZ has expaned into other countries by setting up parallel social networks in Poland (www.studentix.pl), Italy (www.studiln.it), Spain (www.estudiln.net), and France (www.studiqg.fr). The expansion of StudiVZ has attracted quite a large amount of media attention (see MSNBC,Netzwelt, fazjob, WAZ, Süddeutsche, New York Times, ITNewsByte, Manager-Magazin, Spiegel (I), Spiegel (II), Frankfurter Rundschau, Berliner Kurier, Berliner Umschau, Schweizer Pressetext) and attention by bloggers (see Technorati, GoogleBlogSearch). StudiVZ is also discussed at Wikipedia in German, English and Italian.
Financing

StudiVZ does not charge a fee to the users and has barely any advertisement. So far only the new single by German Band Juli and an subscription to the German newspaper Die Zeit was advertised. StudiVZ has only partially disclosed its financial structure. StudiVZ formally has the status of a British Limited Organisation but is registered in Berlin. According to their blog, the following individuals or companies have invested into StudiVZ: Aaron Voloj Dessauer, Christian Vollmann, Christophe Maire, Dario Suter, European Founders Fund GmbH (Marc, Oliver und Alexander Samwer - see more details below), Holtzbrinck Ventures GmbH (see more details below), Kolja Hebenstreit, Lukasz Gadowski, Matthias Spieß (see more details below), Oliver

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Jung, Peter Schüpbach. The commercial investors (such as Lukasz Gadowski, the Samwer brothers and Holtzbrinck) are discussed in detail below. All other investors come from the circle of friends of the founders. StudiVZ claims that all investors together invested about 2.5 million Euro, with 2 million Euros coming from Holtzbrinck. However, there are a large number of speculations on the Finances of StudiVZ and many bloggers doubt this figure.
Access

Users sign up via Internet, they provide an email-adress and identify which university they attend. Since there is no control if these users are really attending the claimed universities, StudiVZ has no possibility to restrict the access of other non-university users (such as School Students, Former Students, Trainees and Interns). Once students have signed up, they can upload their profile, upload pictures and "photo-tag" them (indicating which other uses can be seen on the picture), they can identify their university classes, they can join groups of common interest, they can send messages to each other, leave messages on the guest book of other users or "gruschel" other users - which is basically like saying a short "Hello" to another person.
Communication

StudiVZ communicates via their blog or via Interviews. Tilo Bonow (according to his website journalist, moderator and media counselor) coordinates their press activities. "StudiVZ-Facts" with some informations are provided by company, Press Articles have not been released between June 2006 and November 2006, and only recently after enormous pressure by bloggers and media, press releases have started again. A recent press release highlights the 1 million users and the 200.000 discussion groups.
Staff

As can be seen on a video released by StudiVZ, between 50 to 60 people work at StudiVZ. A large portion is working in the Marketing Department which coordinates the activities of the CampusCaptains. Campus Captains are StudiVZ users which advertise for StudiVZ by giving away T-Shirts and Stickers. Other departments are the Support Department and the IT-Department. StudiVZ has people working for them in the various European countries and software programmers in Ukraine. Critique Even though the critique is only slowly reaching main-stream media, it is clear that no community based on communication can be non-responsive to the critique of the Blog-o-sphere. Competitors such as Unister.de have become almost irrelevant after heavy criticism from bloggers (for a history see for instance Robert Basic). The following compilation of issues intends to give a more or less precise overview of the rumours,

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critique and speculations that can be found in the blog-o-sphere. Necessarily enough, contradictions exist, some claims are only partially substantiated and not all sources can be named.
Technical Copycat

Issues

StudiVZ looks remarkably like an American-based social network called Facebook. The design is very similar, the order of the menu is the same, most of the style sheets have only been marginally renamed and changed from blue to red, and even the names of some of the graphic-files are copied. The feature "Gruscheln" is a copy of the Facebook feature "Poke". The issue is discussed in both communities (see the discussion group at StudiVZ and at Facebook). A large number of bloggers have commented negatively on this issue (see Unfehlbar, Bumi, Jörg-Olaf Schäfers, Blogpiloten, Oliver Thylmann, Sichelputzer, Sebbi, ManiacMind, Alltagskakophonie , Robert Basic (I), Robert Basic (II), Sebastian Görres, Betalog, Andi, Poolie, ComputerMag, Die Wohnung). Pictures of Screenshots can be found at Flickr. German newspapers have covered the issue as well (see Der Spiegel, Der Spiegel-Pictures). A recent article discussing German Web 2.0 startups and their American copy-counterpart features StudiVZ quite prominently (see VisualBlog). The following arguments are given by the blog-o-sphere for the claim that StudiVZ was simply copied from Facebook: It is possible to change StudiVZ into the design of Facebook by using a script that can be found at Bumi. "Gruscheln" used to be called "poke" in the internal program code" The folder in which StudiVZ showed program errors was called "Fakebook" Data leaks recently discovered in StudiVZ and Facebook have the same structure. In both communities it is fairly simply to retrieve the uploaded pictures of users (see details below see my this recent article, see Jörg-Olaf Schäfers (I),Jörg-Olaf Schäfers (II) Don Alphonso (I) Don Alphonso (II), see the response of StudiVZ here) Apparently, these similarities do not produce a legal problem. Facebook is not planning to sue StudiVZ and pictures of the StudiVZ founders together with the Facebook founders exist. All these have increase the rumour about a sale to Facebook (see for details below). StudiVZ has reluctantly admitted that the design was partially copied. However they base their defense on three points (and are supported by some bloggers on this issue): Firstly, the design of Facebook was not a new development, but also a modification of an earlier socialnetwork. The German Wikipedia entry refers to a book by Rachel Andrew "The CSS Anthology: 101 Essential - Tips, Tricks & Hacks" which probably has been an inspritation for both social networks. Secondly, the real challenge was the set-up of the data-bases (see Comment on Medienrauschen or StudiVZ developer Dennis Bemman defending his own programming work at Reader's Edition). Thirdly, other sites have also copied Facebook (such as unister.de, xianoei.Com or phatcouch.com) and

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StudiVZ has only copyied a standard business model used by social network (see Dittes, Mashable (I), Mashable (II), EveryDigg, IfYouCanDreamIt, Gründerszene). StudiVZ has also a direct copycat meant as a persiflage: PennerVZ. "Penner" is German for" homeless person". PennerVZ is thus a network of homeless persons and it has received attention by bloggers, but also by advertising companies (see my article and Dittes, Grebla, AtomTiger, Sherpa, Blogdoch (I),BlogDoch (II), Sven, Dennis-sagt, Daburna, Robert Basic see the blogs by Penner VZ here, here, and here, see the interview with PennerVZ here).
Bad

Perfomance

For the last months, StudiVZ is very slow and often shows error messages. It is often impossible to log in, difficult to access groups and pages do not reload even after refreshing them in the browser (see Alltagskakophonie, Jörg-Olaf Schäfers, Beetlebum, Dittes, CustomerOfHell(I), CustomerOfHell(II), Blogdoch, Schnitzler). The other websites of StudiVZ in other coutries are also experiencing traffic problems (see for instance France:VisualBlog or their own blog at StudiGQ). StudiVZ has reacted to these critique in various ways: Firstly, they have claimed that the large number of new users was not expected. The two large problems are capacity and scaling. They are now working on implementing AJAX tools to shorten the download time for the various pages and they have switched-off various features that have caused a lot of traffic, such as the "Do you know?"-feature (which showed three unknown user profiles when signing up to StudiVZ) and the Super-Search (which allowed a random combination of search tools) (see StudiVZBlog Secondly, StudiVZ is blaming their telephone company and their hardware (see their blog here, here, here, here and here).After receiving new hardware recently they and are working on the configuration Thirdly, they recommended to use the tab function of Mozilla Firefox to load several pages at once. This is however criticized by bloggers for causing even more traffic (see Sichelputzer and Koosishart). Many bloggers point out that there are other options available for keeping a site running - even through maintenance. They also criticise the communication regarding the maintenance (see Sichelputzer (I), Sichelputzer (II), Dittes (I), Dittes (II)). The copy-cat PennerVZ is already making fun of StudiVZ's server problems by claiming to build some mistakes into the software to crash their servers.
Features

StudiVZ does not allow any links to other sites, messages can not be accessed via POp3/SMTP, it is not possible to create public groups which can be seen outside of StudiVZ, it is not possible to connect your own profile to other StudiVZ clones, it is not possible to integrate blog-feeds or flicker-pictures or youtube-videos into StudiVZ. The StudiVZ team only reluctantly responded to suggestions by user to modify StudiVZ and they pointed towards the heavy workload (see GoetheBlog, A to Z of World, my article on StudiVZ and

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blogs, the comment on StudiVZ and Flickr).
Financing

How does StudiVZ pay its staff and its infrastructure? The public image of being a small independent student project is hard to believe, even though some users of StudiVZ even want to donate their own money or their universities' money to StudiVZ (see Comment at StudiVZ, Comment of Dariani at Reader's Edition). Apparently StudiVZ costs about 60.000 to 100.000 Euros per month which is probably dificult to be financed by donations (see Don Alphonso). The figure of 2.5 million Euros given by StudiVZ is therefore heavily debated in the blog-o-sphere.
Spreadshirt

The original seed capital (about 5.000 Euros each) probably came from Lukasz Gadowski (see Lakattack, see his StudiVZ profile) and Matthias C. Spiess, founders and CEO's of Spreadshirt.net. StudiVZ founder Ehssan Dariani worked there as an intern. Besides money, they also invested knowledge and time (see also Süddeutsche Zeitung and the blog of Lukasz Gadowski at Gruenderszene).
Samwer

The Samwer brothers invested something around 500.000 Euros - earlier comments by bloggers pointed at a higer sum (see comment by Don Alphonso). The Samwer brothers have created (and sold) the mobile phone company "Jamba!". In the blog-o-sphere, they have a bad reputation - not only for their products but also how they treat their eimployees (see article in Tagesspiegel, Golem, Spreeblick, Sichelputzer).
Holtzbrinck

The latest investor is Holtzbrinck Venture Capital, a company that belongs to the German publishing house Holtzbrinck. On their webpage, Martin Weber from Holtzbrinck is mentioned as being a member of board of truestees of StudiVZ (see Blogdoch). Holtzbrinck Venture Capital is involved since August 2006 with about 2 million Euros. According to Peter Turi, Holtzbrinck has already invested 10 million Euros, according to other sources the invested capital is considerable higher (up to 12 million Euros). However this sum is strongly and repeatedly denied by the founders of StudiVZ (see article in the StudiVZ blog). StudiVZ is using the facilities of Parship, a Holtzbrinck daugther, for their European spin-offs. In their blog they have claimed that no further relations exist to their investors. Some bloggers have claimed that this resembles much what is called kick-backing (see Blogbar and the comment by Don Alphonso for more details).
Sale

Some bloggers also discuss whether StudiVZ is likely to be bought up by another company in the future. Concretely Facebook is mentioned as potential buyer (see Ice Blog (I), Ice Blog (II), Rebellmarkt, Customer of Hell). In that case the ownership structure determines how much the investors get back.

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My own personal speculation without having any confirmed sources for this: Gadowski and Spiess own each about 5 percent, the other friends of the founders each not more than one or two percents. The Samwer brothers and Holtzbrinck each about 10 to 15 percent. The remaining 50 percent probably belong to Dariani, Brehm and Bemman. If Holtzbrinck and Samwer have both invested about 2.5 million Euros and received 30 percent, the whole company must be worth at least 10 to 15 million Euros. Again, this is only speculation. Facebook might get bought by Yahoo. Yahoo (with their Social Network Yahoo 360) or Google as a direct competitor of Yahoo (with their Social Network Orkut) are probably monitoring closely what is happening to StudiVZ.
Reactions

by StudiVZ

The accusations are found to a varying degree in a number of blogs (see Medienrauschen, Ichdoof and Jörg-Olaf Schäfers (I) and Jörg-Olaf Schäfers (II), FelixOnTour). StudiVZ reacted to these accusations by first denying, then slowly identifying the relations between StudiVZ, Samwer, Sweatshirt and Holtzbrinck (see here, here and at Dariani's comment at Reader's Edition), but apparently not to the satisfaction of the blog-o-sphere. Unclear identification of ownership and corporate structure made it difficult not to speculate - even though quite a lot of facts are already known (see Blogbar (I), Blogbar (II)). After the speculations and the public pressure to disclose the financial structure became over-whelming, StudiVZ disclosed all investors and explained their relations with them (see their blog. They have however not stated how much each investors owns in the company.
Income

All investors expect a return of their investments. How will StudiVZ generate income, if it does not charge a fee for their services?
GoogleAds

Quite early, bloggers and media rumoured that StudiVZ will use GoogleAds or any other forms of online advertisement (see jetzt.de, Netzeitung, the blogs of Azrael, i-jeriko, Don Alphonso and the comment by StudiVZ founder Michael Brehm). Since prices on ads at social networks are increasing tremendously, such a move can generate a large sum of income, especially when linked to the profiles of users or certain discussion groups (see the article at TechCrunch, MarketWire via Basic Thinking (I) , Basic Thinking (II), Sebastian Görres and Mashable, see also Karmaweb for a discussion of these figures). On the lighter side: some bloggers are suggesting that StudiVz is already making money by advertising for coffee through their error messages (see Haeby and my article on the most famous quote on StudiVZ).
Traffic-Sharing

Most investors invest money only if a start-up fits into the portofolio of their company. Some bloggers claim that StudiVZ is already cooperating with other portals to generate and share traffic - and thus

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generate income through ads. MyVideo.de is a good example: they hosted the StudiVZ Song Competition and belong officially to the ProSiebenSat1MediaGroup. However it is alleged that the above mentioned Samwer brothers are also involved in myvideo.de (see Focus, PCGo, Arno Klein, Azrael74 Gugelproductions, TheInquirer, Robert Basic, Medienrauschen, Blogdoch, Tjacobi and comment by Jörg-Olaf Schäfers).
Licensing

of Gruscheln(TM)

StudiVZ copied the idea of the poke-Feature from Facebook and translated it to Gruscheln. StudiVZ was one of the first social networks in Germany which had the feature of Gruscheln (see for a definition Broedel, ffaabbiiaann, or gruscheln.net,see also der Gruschelwecker). Broedel discovered the Swiss meaning for Grüscheln: "to seek dishonest profit, to gain from trusted mone, to cheat when shuffling cards, to commit a fraud by mixing materials, to falsify goods through mixing, to falsify bills".Apparently StudiVZ tried to register the word as a German trademark. If the idea was to demand a fee from anybody who is using "Gruscheln" without permission, then it was not a productive one. Google had similar problems with the phrase "to google someone" since a trademark is difficult to claim if a word enters common language. Since "Gruscheln" exists in various dialects as well, it is unlikely that it can be used as a trademark (see Robert Basic).
Reactions

by StudiVZ

The founders of StudiVZ have at various stages spoken about their plans to use ads. They also said that in case of a change in the ownership structure, the data security is ensured (see below), which fuels speculation about a possible ownership swap with Facebook (see their entry at the StudiVZ blog)
Business WHU

Strategy Connection

StudiVZ was more succesful compared to other social networks like Lokalisten.de, Unister.de etc. because their founders were well-connected within the networks of elite-universities in Germany. According to some estimates, about 90 percent of the students at ivy-league universities (WHU, EBS etc) are members of StudiVZ. At `normal' universities a far smaller percentage has signed up to StudiVZ. Apparently the tipping point was when more than 150 students per university had signed up (see Agenturblog and comment here)
Censorship

Apparently some posts by StudiVZ users criticising StudiVZ have been deleted (see this Discussion Thread at StudiVZ, see Jörg-Olaf Schäfers (I), Simon-Martin, Tyrion, Don Alphonso, I-Jeriko, BlognRoll, h1rschgehege, Blogdoch, DieStimmederfreienWelt). The Help-File of StudiVZ used to say: "We do not accept the following groups : Groups that criticize StudiVZ, Groups we don't like. Groups for freedom of opinion and reception." Frequently they have also been criticised for censorship in their blog. StudiVZ reacted by claiming that they do not have the personal capacity to watch StudiVZ discussions groups and the deletion of articles was a mistake. They have also opened their blog.

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Some criticism focussed also on the issue that StudiVZ is not doing enough to monitor discussion groups with illegal or problematic content.
Privacy

User data and its alleged missing protection by StudiVZ are one of the most discussed arguments by bloggers. How Data mining for commercial purposes (such as GoogleAds) and other mechanisms work can be found in this survey of "Facebook and Data Mining". Some bloggers criticize that the disclaimer of StudiVZ is no guarantee that the data can not be misused in case of a sale to Facebook or any other company (see Spiegel, StudiVZ Press Speaker in jetzt.de and the blogs by Helga Städtler, Jörg-Olaf Schäfers or the comments by Dr. Dean or Stefanolix(I), StefanOlix(II), see also the Federal Data Protection Law). StudiVZ founder Ehssan Dariani commented the privacy issue at Reader's Edition claiming that the users can decide about how much private data other users can see. However the issue that bloggers focus most on is that not the data other users can see, but the data that company can see use. According to StudiVZ founder Michael Brehm, not more than 10 people within StudiVZ have access to user data. According to their blog, they continue to guarantee the security of their user-data and have even identified a manager for data security. However new accusations focus on the issue of images in StudiVZ. Apparently it is possible to retrieve the URL of all images in StudiVZ - even those marked as private by their users. Once the URLs are known, they can also be accessed by people who have not signed up. StudiVZ has reacted to these accusations by pointing to the diffulties in accessing the URLS, but the blog-o-sphere reacted to this defense by showing that it is fairly easy to conclude the URL of unkown pictures from existing URLS.
Expansion

and unfair behavior towards competitors

As mentioned above, StudiVZ has already expanded into four other countries. Despite the fact that StudiVZ does not plan to expand into Austria or the UK (since Austrian and Swiss Students are using StudiVZ as well, and British Students are using Facebook), StudiVZ has registered the domains for their competitors in UK and Austria (such as Unister.at or studylounge.co.uk). Many bloggers see the usage of competitor's domaines as illegal and bad company behavior - even though it is apparently widespread (see unfehlbar.net, Robert Basic, Jörg-Olaf Schäfers, Sichelputzer, Blogdoch, Dittes). StudiVZ founder Michael Brehms apologized at Jörg-Olaf Schäfers blog and at Robert Basics's blog, which drew new comments from bloggers (see Notizblog and this comment). Some bloggers have also mentioned the fact that StudiVZ and its clones are incompatible and with studiVZ a group lobbying for the same cause can be found (see StudiVZ-Group)
Communication Bad

Corporate Communication

Even though StudiVZ has its own blog, they have only recently started to systematically organize public support for their website. Their communication is often criticized for being insufficent and their reactions to critique is inappropriate (see for instance this blog-entry of StudiVZ, see bdvb, Netzeitung, Frankfurter Rundschau, Spiegel Online, Medienhandbuch (I), Medienhandbuch (II) see also the company video featured at SevenLoad, Robert Basic , Darianis old blog, or the comments by

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Sichelputzer, Robert Basic (I), Robert Basic (II), Robert Basic (III), Sherpa, Visual Blog, Blognroll, BlogDoch, Fallenbeck, Agenturblog, NYBlog, Txtblog , CuriousCreatures, TuriBlog, Customer of Hell, Timo Kotowski, Pop64, Sichelputzer . StudiVZ has tried to defend their bad communication policy due to their workload, but at the same time they claim that some criticism is unproductive and will not be displayed on their blog (see here and here). The communication has improved a little bit during the last couple of days, with more structured blog entries. However they have also deleted their link to their blog on their starting page.
Fake-Blogging

StudiVZ staff has appeared with their own names on other people's blogs, but recently cases of fakeblogging have come up (see Don Alphonso (I) and DonAlphonso (II)).
Wikipedia

editing

Recently allegations of Wikipedia editing have surfaced - apparently a former StudiVZ staff member Julian Artope has deleted entries that in his opinion did not represent the truth about StudiVZ (see Don Alphonso (I), Don Alphonso (II), Notizblog, I-Jeriko). The StudiVZ founders have claimed that they did not order the editings or were aware of Julians activities.
Spam

The French StudiVZ spin-off is using spam-advertising (see Blogbar). Spam and profile grabbers have now also appeared on the German StudiVZ site (see Kurpick (I), Kurpick (II).
False

information

Some bloggers discussed if the number of student members in StudiVZ is real - apparently up to 10 percent of the StudiVZ entries are fake-entries (see Reader's Edition, see also the fake profile by former Blogger and now Waz editor Katharina Borchert via Abseits, see the 10 fake profiles used by Sichelputzer). After contacting the above mentioned "Fake profile" it became apparent that the profile belongs to a real person. However other fake identies probably exist.
(Declining)

Online Star 2006

Because of the above criticism and the bad performance, the decision (see also StudiVZBlog) to award StudiVZ the online star 2006 is under heavy critique (see Chaos or Blogdoch).
Criticism

towards Ehssan Dariani

Within StudiVZ resistance (see also this group) towards the personal connection between StudiVZ and its founder Ehssan Dariani is rising and people start to revolt against the spread of his private life on StudiVZ and its blogs (see also the following comment in the StudiVZ blog). This is no surprise - since the founder of StudiVZ was mostly used for displaying the company - but has

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recently made some big mistakes for which he is under special heavy critique (see Peter Turi). Ehssan Dariani has apologized for his various mistakes (see below and at the StudiVZ blgo here and here, which immediately stirred a whole load of reactions and also led to the search for his private pictures on the Internet (see VisualBlog, BlogNRoll, Jörg-Olaf Schäfers, Blogdoch (I), Blogdoch (II)).
Sexism

in StudiVZ

Bloggers (such as BooCompany) or newspapers (such as heise.de) point to a (now partially withdrawn) You-Tube Video (still available Peter Turis weblog) which features Ehsaan Dariani filming two girls in the subway of Berlin and criticize the sexism allegedly shown in the video. Some bloggers criticize the publishing of the videos (see also Youtube) since critique should focus on the company's behavior (see Robert Basic, Blogdoch, Goetheblog, Björnstar, Meckerziege).
Anti-Semitism

in StudiVZ

Bloggers discovered that the domain www.voelkischer-beobachter.de and www.voelkischerbeobachter.de are registered under Darianis name. The historical details can be found at Wikipedia, in essence the name refers to a German Nazi Newspaper which was one of the main propaganda tools for Hitler and others to spread their disastrous ideas. The domain now links to Titanic-Magazin - a left-wing satirical newspaper who apparently has not discovered the abuse of its homepage. The domain www.voelkischerbeobachter.de, also owned by Dariani, links to a German satirical movie about Hitler. Furthermore, some bloggers have a copy of an invitation that he sent out for his birthday party in spring 2006. The invitation is designed like the Völkischer Botschafter - but was taken from the internet only two days later. Screenshots can be found on various blogs. Recently more screenshots appeared which give the impression that Dariani tried to sell the URLs - or at least he offered them to sell (maybe without the intention to do so). See Robert Basic (I), Robert Basic (II),Peter Turi, Don Alphonso, Blogbar, Der Sichelputzer, Dittes, Jörg-Olaf Schäfers (I), Jörg-Olaf Schäfers (II), Goetheblog, Zeineku, VisualBlog, Fukkle Bim Jerry, Timo Kotowski, Rebellmarkt see also newspaper Handelsblatt, Die Welt). Ehssan Dariani has responded to these allegations by referring to his and his company's intercultural background (see StudiVZBlog). Yet instead of apologizing, he accused the bloggers of a false sense of political correctness which of course drew immediate criticism (see Ditte, Robert Basic, Jörg-Olaf Schäfers, Die Stimme der Freien Welt). Ehssan Dariani replied to the accusations by apologizing for the mistakes
Private

editing

The makers of StudiVZ are trying to cleanup their private history in the web (see also Don Alphonso, Notizblog and Blogdoch).
Conclusion

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Kasi-Blog » Blog Archive » StudiVZ Encyclopedia - the most complete summary (unti... Page 11 of 25

The above criticism leads to the question how long StudiVZ can survive. The list of problems is long and many other problems have maybe not yet surfaced. Some bloggers have already suggested a StudiVZ-Watchblog (see Andi). The fact that many bloggers who are not speaking German are discussing StudiVZ shows the increased interest of the topic worldwide - even though some English bloggers are still trying to guess what StudiVZ means (see Readster, David Warwick). Also the media is stepping on the train and are starting to research the blog-history of StudiVZ. I hope my link collection gives a good starting point for a good research. If you use the material, please make sure to contact both StudiVZ and bloggers in the scene to identify points that are not mentioned here. If the research is too lousy, the blog-o-sphere might respond appropriately (see Dittes, Robert Basic, Abseits). More importantly,the list of users who are signing off from StudiVZ is getting longer (see Schnitzler, Haseler, Pottblog, Pop64, LasseRheinGans, Blog2, Kurpick, CWagner , KaiTimmer or HappyArts). Maybe because users are not free from stalking in StudiVZ (see Sichelputzer), but probably more because quite a few bloggers think that StudiVZ will be history soon or has large problems to say the least (seeVisualBlog, Provinzblog, NYBlog, Pop64, Jörg-Olaf Schäfers, Don Alphonso, Suedblog, Timo Kotowski). This is a pity, since quite a few users are happy to use StudiVZ for their private and business purposes (for instance Gerhard Schoolmann describes in his blog in various articles - here, here and recently herehow he and his staff are using StudiVZ for advertising his bar, or see Helga Städtler describing the opportunities for Universities). The idea still has a potential - but it depends on the next moves of StudiVZ. I have compiled a lists of things that in my eyes are needed - and put them online here. A large number of German and International blogs have linked to my previous summary (see for instance Chaos@Paderborn, Schnitzler, Blogdoch , David Warlick, Customer of Hell, Robert Basic,Jörg-Olaf Schäfers, MyMediaMirror, Fimpern, Gastronomie Blog, Visual Blog, Michael Gross, Don Alphonso, Dave's Blog, Florian Treiss, PlanSphere, SpreeBlick), even some newspapers (Frankfurter Rundschau). Thanks for all the comments and suggestions, they were extremely helpful to write this updated summary. The summary is far from complete, but it is better than the old one and I would be happy if you could update your link to this new page. I have written various articles on StudiVZ on the following topics: StudiVZ and TakingITGlobal.org, Facebook, Unister and StudiVZ, 100 blonde friends on StudiVZ, StudiVZ and PennerVZ, StudiVZ - the glamour is fading (Previous Summary), The most famous quote on StudiVZ, Revised Summary of StudiVZ - The Case of a Watchblog, A million data sets and ways to break up with StudiVZ, StudiVZ and StudiGQ - French-German hostilities, Is StudiVZ/StudiGQ expanding into the USA, A Message from Planet StudiVZ
This entry was posted on Montag, November 20th, 2006 at 06:20 and is filed under echologist. Tags: data security, google, social networks, spam, studivz, web 2.0, wikipedia, xing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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7/17/2008