StudiVZ is the name of a social networking service for university students in Europe, based in Berlin, Germany. The name is an abbreviation of the German expression Studentenverzeichnis, which means students directory.
The service is largely comparable to the services offered by its US-counterpart Facebook. StudiVZ claims to be one of the biggest social networks in Europe, with reportedly about 1,000,000 members as of November 2006, mostly in German-speaking countries Germany, Switzerland and Austria.
The network was launched in October 2005 by two students from Berlin, but in the meantime has collected an undisclosed sum of investments by, among others, the media group Holtzbrinck and the Samwer brothers, founders of the ringtone vendor Jamba!. Similar services have just been launched in France (StudiQG), Italy (StudiLN), Spain (EstudiLN), and Poland (StudentIX), other countries are supposed to follow.
In early November 2006, StudiVZ gained some notoriety outside its realm and also in English-speaking countries when the word was at times listed as the most popular search term on Technorati, even eclipsing former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld who had just resigned from office. This followed a couple of discussions and speculations which the company had to face in the German blogosphere, mainly about issues such as server performance, questions of privacy, internationalization, or publicity gaffes by the inexperienced team of founders.
The whole discussion culminated when some blogs published or made reference to an invitation card and accompanying website distributed by one of the founders. The invitation was obviously meant as a satire, but as it was modelled on the Völkischer Beobachter, the propaganda newspaper of the Nazi movement, several people took offense and criticized the action for its bad taste. Some bloggers also published critical accounts and speculations about the company's business practices, claiming they included spamming, cybersquatting, and over-reliance on the enthusiasm of volunteers. In the meantime, the company has tried to answer some of the criticism, which nevertheless continues unabated.
The site has also been criticized for its astounding similarity to Facebook - the site is virtually identical save the color scheme. Some of the error messages reveal that one of the folders on the site is called "Fakebook".
January 2007 Studivz has been sold to one of its investors, Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH, a German publishing group, without any offical figures given. Speculations vary from 20 to "over 100" million Euro.

Source : Wikipedia