

Studiverzeichnis, or StudiVZ for short, is basically the German Facebook. They have about 1,000,000 users and have grown faster than most social networking sites. There are an estimated 15,000 new members each day compared to Facebook's 20,000 per day, but StudiVZ started in July. The problem for Facebook is that they can't expand into Europe or other regions like Myspace did because other regional services are taking the lead abroad. Mark Zuckerberg originally wanted to sell Facebook for $2 Billion, but the site is currently valued at half of that. With competition on the rise, niche networks are going to become the next big thing. I predict owning several, powerful niche networks is going to be worth more than owning one big generic one.