This is the situation for German students: StudiVZ is the biggest player on the market but is going to use penetrating advertising strategies to refinance their expenses.

There are only a few ways to avoid this advertisements. Firstly, StudiVZ allows to exclude yourself from advertising, but the smarties have hidden this functions well.

Signing off completely and switching to another network is also an option. Facebook has more to offer than StudiVZ because the German network there is growing fast, but at the same time their marketing strategies are just as penetrating.

Kaioo says there are an non-commercial alternative because they will donate all revenues to charity. The problem is: when it comes to functionalit, it is even less satisfying than StudiVZ. For instance, it is impossible to administrate jointly a group in Kaioo - so much said about networking.