When you start taking steps at being a knockoff of a site that is the largest social network and continually expanding its horizons; you are asking for trouble. StudiVZ had done the same and Facebook has taken the matter to court as reported by FT.
StudiVZ claims to be the largest and the most successful social networking site in Germany, Austria and Switzerland with 10 million active users. It has been blamed for replicating almost the whole of Facebook; from features to services. The only difference that appears to lurk around is the Blue theme of Facebook being replaced by Red.
The case might primarily be filed due to a fact that Facebook has failed at capturing the German user base. Pretty surprising given Facebook’s 80 million active user base around the world as it claims so. It was clearly mentioned by Facebook that they are looking forward to put an end to this illegal; activity and make sure that users don’t get confused or that Facebook’s reputation be harmed.
StudiVZ is based in Berlin and was brought last year by Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck, a German publishing company for $112 million. The representatives for both the firms could not be reached.
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