Fachtag Web 2.0 30-Oct-2007

studiVZ & SchülerVZ

Dennis Bemmann Founder & CTO

© studiVZ 2007

Overview

• Social Networking website

• Focus on students

• Free of charge (revenues through advertising)

• High usage ratios

Founded in Berlin (November 05)

Germany‘s fastest growing website

Germany‘s most clicked website

Profitable

© studiVZ 2007

• Members: 3,400,000

• Average member age: 23.46 years

• Men / women ratio: 51 / 49 %

• Logins / day: 4,700,000

• Active members (day): > 50%

• Active members (month): > 90%

• Employees & interns: 105

• Regional sites: DE, FR, IT, ES, PL

Raw Facts

© studiVZ 2007

Notoriously popular with bloggers

To some bloggers, studiVZ is part of the Axis of Evil

technorati.com, 01-05-2007

© studiVZ 2007

• Page impressions / day: 140,000,000

• Hosted photos: 127,000,000

• Private messages: 485,000,000

• Registered friendships: 85,000,000

– New per day: 350,000

• Hosted groups: 1,450,000

• DB Queries / second: 120,000

• Servers: 155

• Processors: 686

• RAM: 2400 GB

Raw Facts

© studiVZ 2007

• info-centric

• intuitive

• easy to use

Product

© studiVZ 2007

Information individually adjustable

Personal Profiles

© studiVZ 2007

Sorted by last update

Friendships

© studiVZ 2007

Discussions

Photos

Groups as Labels

Flexible settings:• access rights• moderation rights• member visibility

Groups

© studiVZ 2007

More features

© studiVZ 2007

Fierce competition

> 20 social communities in Germany focus on students

© studiVZ 2007

What happened:

Social Networking: monopoly game

One established player per segment

© studiVZ 2007

studiVZ vs. “the media”

Pageviews surpassed traditional media

© studiVZ 2007

International sites

© studiVZ 2007

schülerVZ

• Online since 6 months• 1,650,000 members• #393 among most visited websites world-wide

© studiVZ 2007

Germany's Top 10 Websites

3.666.027.724

2.549.238.976

1.068.490.925

965.495.715

857.157.527

570.978.296

567.913.995

559.846.447

445.939.399

405.467.226

StudiVZ

T-Online

mobile.de

yahoo

Lokalisten

Bild.de

MyVideo

MSN

AOL

Spiegel Online

Page Impressions

Visits

© studiVZ 2007

What happened so far

© studiVZ 2007

What happened so far...

© studiVZ 2007

What happened so far...

22 m2

© studiVZ 2007

What happened so far...

© studiVZ 2007

What happened so far...

© studiVZ 2007

What happened so far...

0:30 am

© studiVZ 2007

What happened so far...

© studiVZ 2007

What happened so far...

© studiVZ 2007

What happened so far...

© studiVZ 2007

What happened so far...

© studiVZ 2007

What happened so far...

© studiVZ 2007

Growing up

Creativity

Individuality

Genius

CHAOS

Efficiency

Planability

Quality

ORDER

Get the balance right...

© studiVZ 2007

Creativity

Individuality

Genius

CHAOS

Efficiency

Planability

Quality

ORDER

Growing up

Responsibilities

Reporting Structure

Legal Issues

Meeting Culture

Transparency

Corporate Goals

Business Processes

Controlling

RequirementsEngineering

Release Process

Communication

Human Resources

Fun & Crazyness

Leadership

© studiVZ 2007

Professionalization

Acquisition by Holtzbrinck

Executive Directors today:• Marcus Riecke• Dennis Bemmann• Michael Brehm

© studiVZ 2007

Monetization

Through Advertising!

How do you earn money?

So what‘s beyond banners?

© studiVZ 2007

Monetization

Telegram Landing Page Partner Website

© studiVZ 2007

Case study: Blue Man Group

• Landing page: Information, Videos, Link

• Added value 2 tickets at the price of 1 very positive reactions

• Result after 42 hours: 22.7 Mio Telegram views 628,000 Landing page views > €100,000 in ticket sales

© studiVZ 2007

Case study: Blue Man Group

• 80,000 views during promotion• Viral effect: 174,000 afterwards

Direct Entry at #1

© studiVZ 2007

Other forms

Boutique

Die ZeitVertigo.FMFashion AngelsApple

EinstiegJobs & Career

• Premium Groups

© studiVZ 2007

Our first 5,000 members

0

500

1.000

1.500

2.000

2.500

3.000

3.500

4.000

4.500

5.000

02.11

.05

02.12

.05

02.01

.06

02.02

.06

02.03

.06

02.04

.06

© studiVZ 2007

Our first 250,000 members

0

25.000

50.000

75.000

100.000

125.000

150.000

175.000

200.000

225.000

250.000

02.11

.05

02.12

.05

02.01

.06

02.02

.06

02.03

.06

02.04

.06

02.05

.06

02.06

.06

02.07

.06

02.08

.06

5,000

Growth by factor 50

within four months

© studiVZ 2007

Our first 2 million members

0

250.000

500.000

750.000

1.000.000

1.250.000

1.500.000

1.750.000

2.000.000

02.11

.2005

02.12

.2005

02.01

.2006

02.02

.2006

02.03

.2006

02.04

.2006

02.05

.2006

02.06

.2006

02.07

.2006

02.08

.2006

02.09

.2006

02.10

.2006

02.11

.2006

02.12

.2006

02.01

.2007

02.02

.2007

02.03

.2007

02.04

.2007

250,000

© studiVZ 2007

Technical challenge

Exponential growth caused performance problems

Social Networking = many data writes

© studiVZ 2007

Fast data growth

0

200.000

400.000

600.000

Feb. 07 Mrz. 07 Apr. 07 Mai. 07 Jun. 07 Jul. 07 Aug. 07 Sep. 07

Photo uploads per day

© studiVZ 2007

Fast data growth

Assume we would print messages…

(5 per page)

4x

All messages in system: 29000 km (4x Berlin - New York)

New every 8 minutes: 368 m (Berlin TV Tower)

© studiVZ 2007

System architecture

Client

Server

© studiVZ 2007

Hardware

• Web Servers (PHP): 85• DB Servers: 56• Cache Servers: 14• Proxy / Img Servers: 8• Web Servers (Static): 3• Mail Servers: 3• SAN / NAS 3• Load Balancers 2• Switches etc.• Content delivery network

© studiVZ 2007

Hardware

HP DL-385 / 585 • 4x / 8x AMD 280 2.4 GHz 1MB• 16 GB RAM• 2x 73 GB SCSI HDD 10K• FiberChannel -> SAN

HP DL-380• 2x Intel XEON

© studiVZ 2007

Software

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux• Apache 2• PHP• MySQL 5• Squid• MemCached• Sphinx• Ganglia• ...

© studiVZ 2007

47

Scalability

Growth causes problems:

capacity related architecture related

© studiVZ 2007

System architecture

© studiVZ 2007

Dennis' Scalability Rules / Buzzwords

• Think horizontal! -> avoid monoliths• Modularity -> avoid interdependencies• Asynchronousness -> avoid waiting• Simple queries -> avoid joins• Reduce complexity -> avoid transactions• Locality• Create redundancies -> for speed• Normalize wisely -> aim = simple invalidation• 80 / 20 rule• use technology for what it's meant for

– e.g. database for storing data

© studiVZ 2007

Case Study: unddu.de

• Budget: >10 Million EUR

• Team: >30 people

• Partners: web.de, GMX

• Target group: 40 million german internet users

• Networks: private contacts, business, school friends, families, clubs

• Content: all forms of publishing

• Matthias Greve, CEO web.de:

• „Existing platforms are too complicated. We make social networks really popular. For millions of people!“

• „Over a million users within one year“

• „We clearly claim market leadership“

© studiVZ 2007

Case Study: unddu.de

© studiVZ 2007

Case Study: unddu.de

© studiVZ 2007

Case Study: unddu.de

Dating

Business Family

Friends

Mail

Articles

Videos MusicBlogs

kids

studentspensioners

azubis

families

families

© studiVZ 2007

Web 2.0: Narrow target groups

Age

Education

Highschool students

Univ. students

© studiVZ 2007

Content and audience

Print / TV Social Network

© studiVZ 2007

Ask Dennis questions

Advertize on studiVZ

Dennis gruscheln

Applause!

Apply for Job / Internship

Mail dennis@studivz.net

Dennis Bemmann

Thank you.

Information

AccountName: Dennis BemmannMitglied seit: 02.11.2005

KontaktE-Mail: dennis@studivz.netSkype: pastaclub

AllgemeinesHochschule: HU BerlinStatus: StudentStudiengang: InformatikGeschlecht: männlichGeburtstag: 28.07.1978

Meine Seite

Meine Fotos

Start

Meine Freunde

Mein Account

Privatsphäre

Meine Gruppen

Nachrichtendienst

Leute finden

Lehrveranstaltungen