StudiVZ: Learning to shut the FCUK up the hard way
So the shit hit the fan: Mashable and GigaOm run the story of StudiVZ, their Nazi style party invitation – and the sales negotiations with their American model Facebook.com. I guess whatŽs happening now between Facebook.com and the unexperienced founders will teach them to stop bragging around. My whistleblower from inside the company – since Ehssan Dariani has a strange taste for nasty videos I call him “deep throat” ;) – confirms that the founders are under pressure, since they donŽt want their users to know what maybe is coming up next. Many Germans are quite aware of privacy issues, and FacebookŽs pricacy terms seem to be a violation of common European and German legal standards.
To give a little bit more details on the talks: In a time beyond any privacy standards IŽm able to provide some picture just a few minutes before the news about the talks in America started to spread. Flickr shows the pr-desaster in the making. You know, running a successful start-up in Germany means to attend a lot of wannabe-US-conferences, and one of those seems to be named after the dotcomcrash famed idea!lab incubator. It all happens in the idyllic town of Vallendar at the elite university WHU Beisheim School. And this is where worlds collide – even if you are one of the happy few to attend, even if you do a good presentation, you must not show that arrogant Silicon Valley disrespect for old European elites that reminds everybody of that stupid Dotcom hubris. This is a very bad idea. Because, if youŽre hanging out with one of your business angel after the show, having a good meal and everyone around you is bragging about their success, growth and exit options – you might start telling what you are going to do with your smart gruschel company. You tell them about your friendship with the founders of Facebook, about the journey over the ocean … and you donŽt mind the person that doesnŽt like your inappropriate behaviour, that t-shirt-thingy, your cheap ringtone-investors, but you donŽt give a damn to those listening, youŽll be a star, youŽll sell all that crap to Mark Zuckerberg, making you the first new Dotcom millionaire in Germany, and Hölle, youŽre fcuking cool and you love the way they stare at you.
In fact, youŽre not really wise. This person happens to be an old friend of the notorious Don Alphonso Porcamadonna (moi), the infamous startup killer of the Munich Area, and just two weeks later Don is going to rip up some of your very private parts. And this person tells him what youŽve been bragging. Don starts to ask questions, talks to others close to your company, the other founders have been talking too much, too – and in the end you find yourself and the “best kept company secret” on No. 1 of Technorati search. And poor Mark Zuckerberg has to say “No comment”, as another source close to facebook.com confirms.
Well son, thatŽs the way I love your Web2.0. Or, as another participant of the Vallendar mess states:
“We discussed if weŽre in a bubble. We all agreed that this is not the fact and we learned from the mistakes done in Web1.0”.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Grüezi Don,
mich überkommt das schiere Kotzen beim Gedanken,dass solcher brauner Schleim an der
Uni St.Gallen ausgebildet wird.
Auch mit meinem Steuer-Bazen!!
Tolle Arbeit Don.Danke
Oh wo wären wir ungewaschenen, geschiedenen oder sonstwie unterbezahlten Massen ohne die Entschlossenheit, Nerven und Überblick dieses Typs von Web2.0 Entrepeneusen :-)
thx
“We discussed if were in a bubble. We all agreed that this is not the fact and we learned from the mistakes done in Web1.0″.
What they merely have learned from: To persuade themself that new curtains make a big difference to the messy room.
GigaOm, nicht, GigaCom.
The picture of: “talking too much about company secrets” (as you promised in your rebell-teaser), I cant see it here :-))
Anyway, gruschel(tm) on!
Die braunen Welteroberer hatten schon immer Probleme mit den alten europäischen Tugenden wie Bescheidenheit, Abstand, Diskretion, usw.
Well, I admit, that was the applied Dariani truth ;). Actually, if i found a picture of them and my source, I wouldnt have linked it.
FCUK? FUCK!
Well. a beautiful Korean queen taught me to FCUK – its better if you want to enter the American market.
FCUK = French Connection UK.
Is there already a Briefkastenfirma of Studi-France in Great Britain? Oh yes, I forgot… the Limited is living in an english Briefkasten *giggle*
They won’t believe that my comment smoothly penetrated the spam filter.
And these guys, bragging around, bearing responsibility for a million private data sets? I hope, the students pay attention to your article, before they will find themselfes “and the best kept “-private-” secrets on No. 1 of Technorati search.”
Well done, Don.
Comments dropped to minimum level as soon as English got a la mode. Scared away people without CPE ;-).
Deutschsprech ist auch o.k., oder? Die US boys haben es doch jetzt mitbekommen. Also back to the roots, äh den Rücken zu den Wurzeln.
Und meine Frage: Ist die Welle gebrochen, der Surf zu Ende? Oder ist der Strand noch nicht in Sicht?
Nächste Haltestelle: Zerlegen der Zahlen und Angaben von Michael Brehm vor dem Hintergrund typischer Stufenfinanzierungsmodelle nebst Erklärung, warum StudiVZ 2 Millionen von Holtzbrinck hat und wieso dennoch ein zweistelliger Millionenbetrag bei Holtzbrinck genannt wird.
PS: StudiVZ hat wieder Platz 1 bei Technorati erobert, beantwortet das meine Frage? Und: Don hat Bukowski gelesen.
Woher kommt eigentlich das Gerücht, die WHU sei eine Elite-Universität (… elite university WHU Beisheim School …)? Geht man bei jeder Wirtschaftsklitsche (Jakobs Kaffee Uni Bremen ja auch) immer sofort davon aus, dass es dann um eine Elite-Uni handelt?
Ich würde mir wünschen wenn die Zusammenfassungen auch in französisch und polnisch verfügbar wären. Diese Länder müssen auch gewarnt werden, nicht nur die USA.
Ich würde mir wünschen, die Studenten stellen eine eigen Plattform auf die Beine (Jungs/Mädels, ihr wisst haargenau, wie das geht ;-), als ihre Persönlichkeit zur Verfügungsmasse irgendwelcher dubioser Spätpubertiernder zu machen.
Es gibt freien Content, freie Software, freie Netze, freie Nachrichten, freie Infrastrukturen, warum nicht auch den wichtigsten Layer, die Persönlichkeit des Anwenders be-freien?
Wer verschiedentlich ein “e” vermisst oder ein “t” erwartet, mag es bitte mit Filzstift selbst einfügen. Vielen Dank!
@el_loco: die gängigen Plattformen haben ja alle das gleiche Problem: sie sind zentralisiert, und wer den Server betreibt halt alle Daten, ob das nun StudiVZ oder ein “echt studentischer” Klon davon ist.
(Ausserdem kostet auch der Betrieb allein einer so großen Platform ernsthaft Geld, das auch irgendwo herkommen muss.)
Die dezentralisierten Ansätze von Social-Networking-Technik wie FOAF sind meines Wissens nie über das akademische Versuchsstadium hinausgekommen. Ausserdem hab ich da bislang auch noch nicht verstanden, wie ich kontrolliere wer meine Daten bekommt.
Hello to all English-Speaking People out there:
Even Germanys biggest News-Website (Spiegel-Online) is finally aware of what happens around the founders of StudiVZ:
http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/0,1518,448340,00.html
(Article is in German, but shurely there will be someone in the WWW who is translating this sooner or later)
StudiVZ and their founders have to be taken off the WWW I think, that’s my personal opion.
Paul
Wenn man mal ein halbes Jahr Zeit hätte, könnte man mit Erlang & Mnesia & Inets allein schon was Ordentliches auf die Beine stellen; und zwar wesentlich performanter & stabiler als das PHP-Gefrickel.
Das ganze das als GPL Paket zur Verfügung stellen und selbstorganisierende Zellen an den Unis können es aubauen (oder eben nicht).
Kontrolle über die Daten ist nie ein technisches Problem, sondern ein rechtliches.
Da muss es eben eine non-profit Organisation geben, die unmöglich aufgekauft werden kann.
@Felix
“PHP-Gefrickel” danke für diese Wohltat. Ãœbrigens, hast Du schon Deine Diplomarbeit fertig? Ich hätte da eine Idee….
Diplom?
Sorry ich dachte Du sudierst, wär ein Klasse Thema für eine Diplomarbeit. *hüst*
In respect to privacy concerns: Has anyone checked how many ‘Donald Ducks’ or ‘Margie Murks’ living in ‘Entenhausen, Höllengasse 13’ are listed in the StudiVZ database.
Are there really students stupid enough in 2006 to give any ‘real’ information to sleazy startups?
I would ask myself if one could map more than 100.000 accounts from the acclaimed million to real persons. Same ratio might go for Facebook itself…
So if you have 100.000 real, mappable and active students as customers, what’s the worth of such a customer? You know you’re in a dangerous bubble when the answer lies in a range above 100 Euro. But if facebook buys StudiVZ for 10 million Euro, they maybe will make 5 million in ads before the usual tsunami of copycats drowns Web 2.0. And in terms of doom, a loss of 5 Million Euro is just pathetic, especially when you keep in mind that it is U.S. money burnt…
Actually, I happen to be one of the people responsible for organizing this years IdeaLab!.
Now, there seems to be some anger if not to say “hate” in most of your blog-entries. I don’t like that.
We are not a wannabe-US-conference. IdeaLab! has existed for many years, most of them unaware that there was a similar named company. As every year, we tried to come up with a topic that’s connected to a newly developing businessarea based on new technologies which experiences a lot of startup-activity and beginning press coverage. Obviously we hit that ;-) There were no “happy few” attending, IdeaLab! was open for everyone and heavily subsidized so that a lack of money cannot possibly have stopped anyone from participating.
It was a great conference – at least that’s what people told us afterwards. That is also due to the startup-founders participating who, in a very informal atmosphere were open for all kinds of questions. I have not seen much bragging or disrespect to be honest. Rather they seemed to be quite energetic people, enjoying what they were doing at the moment. Even the people of Wikimedia Germany got along with them very well :-) Regardless of mistakes that undoubtedly have been made, I’d like to ask you and any reader of this blog not to start putting together the pieces with such a strong bias. “arrogant”, “disrespect”, “bragging”, “elite university”, “wannabe-US-conference” – it all seems to fit to you doesn’t it? There probably isn’t something nasty behind every rock, just keep that in mind, there’s always two sides of a story and yours is definitely pretty far of to one side… The pictures anyway are far from being a proof for the words you used to link them, if anything you’re ripping them totally out of their context.
Don’t get me wrong, I like the way how you’re investigating the whole story, I just think it’s not quite as nasty as you’re making it (it starts with the choice of words as I have pointed out). Of course it sound more interesting this way but don’t get too close to our beloved “Newspaper” BILD ;-)
And please, don’t condemn anybody for supposedly “bragging”. For you, that’s hypocritical.
Best regards,
Michael
I beg your pardon. Micheal, but since Im Don Alphonso and I know what happened at the WHU, it should be obvious that the whole thing was a complete desaster for StudiVZ. I know Michael Brehm is one of your stars, but success males people much too confident. Talking about exit options in public is anything but wise.
And theres ine more thing. I guess Im a little bit older, and Ive seen hundreds of pitches during the last bubble. Call me a cynic, but I know those smart guys ready to conquer the world and their rotten personalities. In fact, Ive been one of those who told them how to do make “it” big. Nothing has changed, because the system of private equity didnt change. VC is the fuel you all need to run your buzz and your dreams, youre ready for the ride, and youll end up where weve been in 2003.
“IdeaLab! has existed for many years, most of them unaware that there was a similar named company.”
Since its all about entrepreneurship and startups, this is a remarkable confession. Everyone should know Idea!lab and their failures. Doing the right thing means to avoid mistakes, and learning from the mistakes of bubble1.0 might save you when it comes to downturn of bubble2.0.
Reinflating the bubble
studiVZ is sold for over 100 million EUR. Time to put your money back in old-economy soon …
[…] Da Gespräche (wie etwa 2006) zwischen StudiVZ und Facebook zu keiner Lösung geführt hätten, schlägt Facebook nun den Rechtsweg gegen StudiVZ ein. Dabei geht es um den Vorwurf, StudiVZ habe ohne Erlaubnis auf die Computersysteme von Facebook zugegriffen, um sich illegal Daten, etwa Stylesheets oder PHP-Skripte, anzueignen. Insgesamt sei, so Facebook in seiner 116-seitigen Klageschrift, StudiVZ ein Facebook-Klon, der „look, feel, features and services“ kopiert habe. […]