The network was launched in November 2005, inside a flat in Berlin[4] by two students named Ehssan Dariani (CEO) and Dennis Bemmann[1] and was financed by founding investor Lukasz Gadowski.
Since then, they have also collected an undisclosed sum of investments by Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, the Samwer brothers (founders of the ringtone vendor Jamba!
In February 2007, another version called SchülerVZ was launched, this time focused on secondary school students, with a reported membership around three million users.
[5] In February 2012, the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that the VZ networks have experienced a decline in total page views by 80%.
Students were able to keep and maintain a personal page containing information about their name, age, study subjects, interests, courses and group memberships within StudiVZ.
Additionally, StudiVZ provided a private messaging service for its members, including a birthday reminder for people on their friends list.
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 US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who had just resigned from office.
This followed discussions and speculations which the company had to face in the German blogosphere, mainly about issues, such as server performance, questions of privacy, internationalization and publicity gaffes by the inexperienced team of founders.
[13] Some bloggers have also published critical accounts[14] and speculations about the company's business practices, claiming they included spamming, cybersquatting and over-reliance on the enthusiasm of volunteers.
[18] Facebook stated: "As with any counterfeit product, StudiVZ's uncontrolled quality standards for service, features and privacy negatively impact the genuine article.