Comments on: Studivz against Facebook - David against Goliath?

By: Flavio about Business 2.0 » Blog Archive » Facebook’s desperate Move trying to grow in Germany

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 21:22:42 +0000

[...] While Facebook has enjoyed tremendous success in most parts of the world, recently reaching a 100 million active users, it has had real problems growing in Germany. Certainly because Studivz is a strong competition, stronger than I anticipated. [...]

By: Flavio about Business 2.0 » Blog Archive » Facebook Switzerland hits 20k users - Facebook becoming the central people directory?

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 08:23:20 +0000

[...] have 40k facebook Switzerland users and every 180th person is already on facebook! I am confident facebook is slowly but certainly taking over studivz in [...]

By: Flavio about Business 2.0 » Blog Archive » Social Networks fighting for World Domination

Sun, 08 Jul 2007 23:05:07 +0000

[...] map also reveals that facebook might not have the impact everyone thinks it has. As pointed out by Andi, the Facebooks market share in Asia is close to zero, as well as in Latin America. Basically, [...]

By: Andi

Andi — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 16:44:44 +0000

When talking about world leadership in the long-rung I wouldn’t forget that Asian students even though being very active networkers are rarely present on facebook.

By: admin

admin — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 11:59:08 +0000

Peter,

Thanks for your insights.

#1 Is certainly true now in Germany, probably also in Switzerland. Although the younger generation is on facebook already now and not on Studivz (not relevant.) Do you know how many swiss pupils on Schülervz?

#2 I checked just shortly for the name Stephan in Italy: Studiln: 54 names, Facebook: 42 names. You also have to see that the a lot of users in the international brands are the same that on studivz, because for a reason I do not understand, the networks are not interconnected.

#3 True for now. From what I see in Switzerland, the whole highschool community is on facebook. In Switzerland the growth has been accelerated by the not to be underestimated presence of International/American schools, which students are all the earliest adopters on facebook.

#4 very valid point. I’ve been trying to find numbers on those networks, but I didn’t. If you know where I can find it, it would love to include them into my comparison.

I don’t think facebook will overcome studivz overnight in the germanophone markets.

In France we are counting 42k users on facebook in the France network, and if you divide by the rate of people who join their regional network that is already 60k+ users, and those are unique. Happy to put in the studiqg.fr number if you have it.

By: Peter Schuepbach

Peter Schuepbach — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 07:16:14 +0000

Additional short comment: studiVZ has today all the international markets and also schuelerVZ (that explodes right now) under different domains - so you would have to include them as well to have an accurate comparison!

By: Peter Schuepbach

Peter Schuepbach — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 07:14:00 +0000

I am not so sure that this will be an easy win for Facebook. Here are my issues:

1. studiVZ has a huge penetration in the key markets - and the penetration is more than 9 to 1 in favor of studiVZ in terms of importance in the daily live of students and pupils! studiVZ is the key communication platform in those markets.

2. The worldwide chart is not the right view because facebook with its much bigger home markets US and UK is much more in favor in terms of size. But the comparison in each market would be interesting. Say Germany, Switzerland Austria but also Spain, Italy etc. In all those markets studiVZ is much bigger!

3. The application platform is realy great. But with its big potential comes also a huge problem of the diversification of facebook. Will facebook be seeen as the network for my close personal network? Do I actively invite today my friends to facebook? A big network might be interesting to serve people but for the main communication there is no must to go to facebook. If you are a student in DACH you have to be studiVZ otherwise you miss the live of your friends

So it will be very interesting to see what will happen once facebook is localized to the international languages.