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"Logic by numbers would have it that Facebook\u2019s Chinese impersonators would irk the Zuckerberg gang more than any other similar copycat attempt made elsewhere on Earth. In fact, let\u2019s assume they do. China\u2019s Internet market will likely do little else but grow fast for the foreseeable future, so Facebook would have an incentive to combat the spoofs anyway it could. At the moment, however, the plan seems to be to deliver \u201Cthe real thing\u201D amid the fakes, and work to supplant the rest through sheer authenticity. (Does the adage that says \u201Cimitation is the most sincere form of flattery\u201D still hold any credence today?)\nMeanwhile, Facebook is evidently taking a harder tack in more Western reaches of the world. According to Kevin Allison of the Financial Times, Germany-based studiVZ, which claims a membership ten million strong, spread throughout the region encompassing Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, has been served a lawsuit by Facebook. The charge: copyright infringement.\n\nA peek at the frontmost layers of studiVZ shows that Facebook is standing on quite solid ground. What\u2019s more, success for Facebook may not be a simple skewering of its target. With legal persistence, it could net a good amount of cash as well. Early in 2007 it was reported that a German publisher by the name of Holtzbrinck GmbH had paid north of $100 million for the acquisition of studiVZ. That was only about a month and a half after studiVZ\u2019s founder, Ehssan Dariani, took some head for personal blunders that made their way into mainstream press outlets like Der Spiegel.\nStudiVZ currently comprises a trio of \u201Cplatforms.\u201D In addition to studiVZ there are sch\u00FClerVZ and meinVZ, which collectively purport to be growing at a rate of 100,000 memberships per week. The company says that its sch\u00FClerVZ brand is its most popular, with 6.4 billion page views per month, circa March 2008.\nIf we\u2019re to compare financial largess among the Facebook look-a-likes of the globe, studiVZ isn\u2019t the most substantial player. Xiaonei, a network purchased in 2006 by Oak Pacific Interactive for an unmentioned sum of money, managed to pull $430 million [VentureBeat] earlier this year from Softbank. Juxtapose that figure against an investment by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing of $100m in Facebook itself between November 2007 and March 2008, and studiVZ certainly isn\u2019t the most pressing concern from Facebook\u2019s vantage at present. Is this lawsuit filed by Facebook then a preparatory measure? Something to start with, to be followed by a hit against a bigger fish?"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2008/07/19/fed-up-with-german-copycat-facebook-unleashes-the-lawyers/>