Facebook is now the daddy of all social networks, with more users than any other. This has obviously lead to some copycat sites. However, one site Facebook accused of being a clone has now settled its case, with StudiVZ coming to an undisclosed financial agreement to make the case disappear.

In July of 2008, Facebook filed a lawsuit in California against StudiVZ, a German language social network which is hugely successful in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, and co. claimed StudiVZ had effectively cloned the site lock, stock and barrel, in essence only changing the color of the background from blue to red.

This came immediately after Facebook had settled a lawsuit aimed in its direction by the creators of ConnectU, who accused Zuckerberg and co. of themselves stealing the idea for a social network allowing students to communicate and socialize online. That case was settled last year and now TechCrunch is reporting Facebook has settled its case with StudiVZ.

Both sides will now be withdrawing their respective claims, and both will continue operating as before. StudiVZ will also pay Facebook a financial settlement, the details of which are not being disclosed at this point. Both sides can consider this result a victory as Facebook gets paid and StudiVZ gets the right to continue on in its current form, which most people would consider to be a form very close to that of Facebook.

But I find this case all the more intriguing in light of how Facebook is currently morphing into some kind of Twitter clone. The introduction of Twitter-style @ friend tags and the development of Facebook Lite both lead me to believe Facebook is trying to either protect itself from the threat of Twitter or squash it entirely depending on your point of view.

Of course Facebook isn’t doing anything wrong with its copying of certain features made popular by Twitter. Unlike with StudiVZ, Facebook isn’t cloning the look and feel of another site, instead merely making itself work more like one of its competitors. It may not be illegal but it’s certainly not tasteful.

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Entry was posted on Friday, September 11th, 2009 at 11:55 pm under Internet, Legal, Opinion, Social Media.

Read more entries by Dave Parrack.
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