Facebook unveils new design, sues German rival

Jul 21, 2008, 19:03 GMT

San Francisco - Social networking site Facebook unveiled a redesigned web site Monday after suing German rival studiVZ that Facebook claimed stole its previous look and interface.

'We believe that our success thus far has been directly related to the unique look and feel of both the site and user interface, and are very disappointed that StudiVZ has unfairly used our creativity, innovation and effort by building a 'clone' site to compete directly against us,' said deputy general counsel Mark Howitson. 'Ultimately, we are supporters of innovation, not imitation.'

The lawsuit was presented Friday in federal court in California. StudiVZ denied the charges and asked for a declaratory judgement at the district court level in Stuttgart, Germany.

The site has more than 10 million registered members in Germany, Austria and Switzerland - countries where Facebook has failed to gain the same level of success it enjoys in the United States. StudiVZ is an abbreviation of the German expression Studentenverzeichnis or Studienverzeichnis, which means students' directory.

With the new redesign, Facebook has reduced its emphasis on personal profiles and made the news feed the primary fixture on its landing page. The new design gives users a quick update screen in which they can easily post short items. Recent figures show that Facebook had nearly 125 million unique users visiting the site in May, ahead of the 115 million users registered by MySpace.com.