Update: Andreas Dittes has left a comment and points out that according to Financial Times (German Edition) the deal is values at 85 million Euros, and not 100 million Euros as reported earlier. The package is pegged at 50 million in direct payout, and more depending on some metrics. Holtzbrinck already owned 15% of StudiVZ following a 2 million Euro investment in the company through its venture arm.
Facebook might be holding out for a billion dollar payday, but the clones are not waiting around and are busy cashing in their chips.
StudiVZ, a German clone of Facebook was sold for 100 million Euros to Holtzbrick Verlag, a giant German publishing company, reports Spiegel Online, a well known German news outlet. 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, and many users had expressed their displeasure with the service.
The buyout is the latest piece of evidence that a Web 2.0 boom is raging in Germany. OpenBC, aka Xing went public recently. PageFlakes, a start page company raised venture dollars from Benchmark Capital. (WWD has a review of the top start pages today.) MySpace is going German, amidst local competition like Lokalisten.
A lot of this mania also ties into the fact that Germany is one of the premier broadband countries. Broadband, as we have seen time and again, drives adoption of new and innovative services, many of them with a regional or local focus. We are seeing some of it play out in other parts of the world right now. China, France, South Korea, India and other broadband economies are building their own web-ecosystems.
16 comments so far
9:30 AM PT
Can anyone say “Friendster”? Facebook is shooting themselves in the foot big time, and quite frankly - they deserve it. Get greedy, and you get nothing.
9:57 AM PT
Yes, there is a big Web 2.0 boom in Germany (and Europe). More and more start-ups are from there!
10:47 AM PT
Just a qucik correction: Welt.de quotes a Holzbrinck-exec saying that they paid “above 50 million, but well below 100 million Euros”.
http://www.welt.de/data/2007/01/03/1164527.html
11:20 AM PT
Why am I working? I should just look for another good idea and copy it in another language and sell for 100 million. Is there already delicious in Vietnamese? Maybe that’s my million dollar idea.
This is ridiculous and annoying.
11:58 AM PT
@wtf: you are still working cause you think technology and looks alone will make a successful site. good luck with your vietnamese clone
2:27 PM PT
The amount has not been confirmed and is just a rumor right now. Note that Holtzbrick has been invested in StudiVZ for a longer time before deciding to go 100% by end 2006.
The “official” blog post about the closed deal is here: http://blog.studivz.net/?p=110
3:29 PM PT
Zuckerberg is coming to my school in a few weeks and this is another thing I’m going to ask him about… we may get an interesting answer if I can phrase a question he’ll have difficulty dodging?
3:41 PM PT
India as a broadband economy?
Broadband penetration in India is less than 1% amongst its internet users.
5:48 PM PT
according to the financial times germany its €85 million splittet into 50m direct payout and some more depending on some goals. so its not that 100m package most bloggers are talking about.
holtzbrinck already bought 15% of studivz for about €2m a few months ago, so holtzbrinck-ventures already owned a part it.
9:15 PM PT
India story
Even though community websites are being built in India the story would be very differnt from say the German or the Chinese examples. The distinct lack of a single language(there are way too many languages in India) usage means that most of the websites would still be in English(and even now english speakers form a majority of net users). Maybe connectivity could change that a little bit, but the sites that will be huge are not linguistic sites definitely.
9:40 AM PT
What matter is whether the website is having large user base or not.
11:48 AM PT
[...] on the transaction, but not specifically on the price, from a contact within Holtzbrinck. More from GigaOm and CenterNetworks. [...]
12:59 AM PT
[...] but not specifically on the price, From a contact within Holtzbrinck. More From GigaOm and CenterNetworks. [...]
1:12 PM PT
[...] on the transaction, but not specifically on the price, from a contact within Holtzbrinck. More from GigaOm and [...]
12:55 PM PT
[...] K-Mart. And lets not forget to mention the multi-million dollar exits Facebook clones are making (Germany, China). That said, I would have probably paraphrased Woot’s FAQ a little less [...]
12:19 AM PT
[...] US Sites breichten: http://gigaom.com/2007/01/03/studivz/ http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/01/03/german-facebook-clone-sells-for-e100-million/ Gute Google [...]
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