There are four Ehssan Darianis on Facebook, one of them is presumably the StudiVZ-Ehssan. There are two Mark Zuckerbergs on StudiVZ, none of them are the Facebook-Mark. I received a message from “Mark Zuckerberg” on StudiVZ.

I guess this is the right moment to show studivz what the meaning of grass roots movment is!!! tell people to move to facebook!!! Write on their wall and join the group.

The StudiVZ-profile named Mark’s birthday (14.05.1984) and claimed that he was member of these three groups:

• Facebook is viel toller als studiverzeichnis (Facebook is better than StudiVZ)
• facebook rulez!
• Studivz ist ein billiger Abklatsch vom FACEBOOK (StudiVZ is a cheap copy of Facebook)

Since the StudiVZ team had met in the fall of 2006 with the Facebook team in New York, I assume that the real Mark Zuckerberg would have no intention to disrupt StudiVZ. Facebook does not see StudiVZ as a competitor. In the end it does not matter if a large number of StudiVZ users are transfering to Facebook and using both of the networks.

Why would Facebook want to take over StudiVZ, as Jochen suggested recently. Like Robert, Paul and Carsten I am very skeptical.

On the other hand, just a little bit of guesswork: Imagine if StudiVZ and Facebook formed some sort of agreement that StudiVZ can build up its Social Network based on Facebook technology. Holtzbrinck steps in to get it off the ground, StudiVZ runs for two years to have a stable user base and then they offer to the users an easy transfer of their data and connections into Facebook.

Holtzbrinck never invested something as 85 million Euro in StudiVZ, the sum was linked to a large bunch of conditions and the net investment of Holtzbrinck was considerably lower. So Facebook wouldn’t have to give Holtzbrinck this lump sum.

Anyway, after confronting “Mark Zuckerberg” with this opinion and asking him whether he was real or fake, the creator of the profile replied:

of course I am not the real Mark Zuckerberg. I am a fake account. I was created by somebody that doesn’t like StudiVZ very much and that now would be a good time to start a small grass root movement. As an experiment. If you want, use me and make friends with other people. I guess this would have some impact if a virtual Mark Zuckerberg has got a couple of thousands friends on StudiVZ.

When I checked again this afternoon, only few people had become friends of this virtual “Mark”. So far, the “experiment” does not seem to be very successful.

The creator of this profile send me the access-email and the password. I don’t think anybody wants profiles to be created in his name. Therefore I decided to delete the account completely.

If you want StudiVZ-users to switch to Facebook, then just wait.