Back in August of 2008 we covered news regarding Facebook attempting to acquire the German competitor Studiverzeichnis before suing the company for being a “knock off.” A couple years later, it appears as though Facebook is in the process of surpassing StudiVZ (if it hasn’t already) and is now opening up an office in Hamburg. Also the investor who purchased StudiVZ has been actively investing in Facebook app developers, in an attempt to diversify their risk.
So what is Facebook’s Hamburg office responsible for? The company sent us the following statement when we inquired about the new office:
We opened an advertising sales office in Hamburg, similar to the ones we already have in Paris, Madrid and Milan. We’ll have a handful of employees there for now, and will add more as the business grows.
We also released our user number for Germany: we now have more than 7.5 million active users in Germany, up from 2 million in January 2009.
While StudiVZ happens to be based in Berlin, Facebook now has a significant footprint in the country. Facebook has grown from 400,000 users back in April of 2008 more than 17.9 million =users which suggests Facebook is on its standard growth rate of doubling every six months in each new market they enter. If this growth rate continues, Facebook will have a dominant foothold on Germany, if it hasn’t already solidified its position as the local market leader.
Hey Nick,
the Holtzbrinck AG isn't anymore counting every social network of them for itself. They just say the "VZNetzwerke" are having 16 Mio. people.
Here is a article about facebook growth in germany
http://translate.google.de/translate?u=http://fac...
Comment by Facebook User — February 23, 2010 @ 10:32 am
As much as I hate Facebook, I really hope they take out StudiVZ. It's horrible.
Comment by Liam — February 23, 2010 @ 12:52 pm
I think StudiVZ really jumped the shark when the last few privacy scares hit and everybody decided to change their names and pics into something unrecognizable. This, in my eyes, managed to devalue the portal completely. What do I need to spend time there if I don't even know who those people are?
Unfortunately people coming from the VZ portals to Facebook now are doing the same.
Comment by G. Neuner — February 23, 2010 @ 3:48 pm
facebook ist shit , but have shit design ! i hate facebook
Comment by dfasdfasdf — February 18, 2011 @ 8:23 am
[...] blog AllFacebook.de, about how the 17.9 million German users of Facebook have migrated from using Studiverzeichnis, or StudiVZ for [...]
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