Blog Blitzkrieg

I stopped by Technorati this morning and noticed that the number one search term across the entire blogosphere today is Studivz. My first thought was, "WTF is Studivz?"

The Technorati search brings up thousands of German-language blogs. Since my knowledge of German is pretty much limited to bier and Einbahn (two words that stand out in my brain from a pair of visits to Germany a decade ago - one is useful for drinking and the other for driving; just don't do both at the same time). But a little Googling solves the mystery: StudiVZ "is a German-based social-network platform for university students", according to Kasi-Blog, which offers an English-language StudiVZ Encyclopedia for the uninitiated. The website, which boasts a million members, is apparently a carbon copy of the popular Facebook networking service.

But why is StudiVZ causing such a blogstorm among our Deutsch-speaking friends? There are various reasons, mainly involving poor site performance, questionable business practices, controversial actions by the site's founders, and, most disturbingly, the discovery of a stalker group within StudiVZ composed of men who hack into the personal information of young frauleins. The administrators of StudiVZ apparently did nothing to prevent data-privacy violations by members of the group.

So now we know why German bloggers are on the rampage. And once again it shows how much faster the blogosphere can get on top of a story than the dino-media.

UPDATE: StudiVZ went offline today, apparently the victim of a worm attack.