16 years after its inception, StudiVZ is closing its doors. MeinVZ is also shutting down after 14 years. What you should consider and why the platforms are disappearing now can be found here on MeinMMO.
What is it anyway?
- Even before TikTok and Instagram, there were sites like StudiVZ and MeinVZ. These are social platforms that were even referred to as competitors of Facebook over 10 years ago.
- The platforms became well-known for the “Gruscheln” feature. Gruscheln is a particularly nice form of greeting and is a mix of “cuddling” and “greeting”.
- Depending on the site, different target groups were addressed, as can be seen from the name of StudiVZ. There was also SchülerVZ in the past, but that was closed much earlier.
- Back then, they were mainly communication platforms that offered similar features. Up until 2011, Germany even had more users than Facebook, with StudiVZ’s membership numbers at 6 million in 2009. (Giga.de)
- However, with the dominance of larger platforms, StudiVZ and MeinVZ became smaller until they ultimately turned more into platforms for online games rather than a social medium.
After 16 and 14 years, it is now finally over and the platforms are disappearing. The operator Poolworks explained this in emails to still registered users.
Sites are “technically so outdated that it makes no sense to continue operating them”
That’s why it is now over: After more than a decade, it is probably just too expensive to keep the sites online. It wouldn’t even be worth bringing them up to the current state of technology.
Additionally, the collapse of the Russian market due to the war in Ukraine has led to massive financial losses.
Originally, there were supposed to be up to 16 million active users in the entire network, but in 2015 there was a low point of 1 million users. According to the site Gründerszene (via Businessinsider), the monthly visitor numbers dropped from 466 million in May 2010 to 77 million at the end of 2011.
Poolworks filed for bankruptcy in 2017 but launched a comeback in 2019. In 2020, a successor named VZ was introduced, which has now been renamed SpieleVZ. The platform sells online games and finances itself through the monetization of these games.
Many of these games have also been available on StudiVZ and MeinVZ.
The offers that are still available on MeinVZ and StudiVZ should be transferred to SpieleVZ as quickly as possible.
What about the games? The operators state on the respective pages: “Work is in full swing on the migration of the games. More information coming soon.” Main partners like “Dorfleben” have already done this.
When will the sites close? Poolworks states: We hereby terminate your current user contract at the end of March 31, 2022. […] After that, all user data on StudiVZ/MeinVZ will be irrevocably deleted. (via Spiegel Online)
Initially, the step was already planned for last year but was postponed due to user requests.
If you still have important photos or other data in your dusty profiles, you should rescue them beforehand.
