German "fakebook" site incurs wrath of Facebook

By Nicola Leske

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Ehssan Dariani, founder of German social network studiVZ, never made any secret of his admiration for Facebook, which is now suing studiVZ for copying its ideas and look.

When he and two of his friends launched studiVZ (www.studivz.net) in October 2005, it was modeled after the U.S. network that began as a way for college students to keep in touch and became an online phenomenon.

In fact, studiVZ is so close to the original, the German network for students has been dubbed "fakebook".

Dariani is reported originally to have wanted to create a men's cosmetics line. But that endeavor failed to take off and he found inspiration instead in U.S. social networks Facebook and MySpace.

He managed to persuade two friends to launch studiVZ. The founders of online T-shirt shop Spreadshirt provided initial funding of 5,000 euros ($7,960) and within months studiVZ turned into Europe's largest student social networking site.

Facebook filed a complaint last Friday accusing studiVZ of copying the look, feel, features and services of Facebook, ultimately seeking to put an end to the German site.

The name studiVZ is an abbreviation of "Studienverzeichnis", which means "students' directory" in German, and the site -- while it visually resembles Facebook, only in red instead of blue -- is more practical than playful in its features.

It has since branched out into SchuelerVZ for school pupils and MeinVZ for graduates and non-students.