I’m hoping there is more to this story than appears to be written and reported by the Canadian Broadcasting Company. Most of the articles I’ve read seem to be harping on the angle, that using Facebook to terminate medical benefits is wrongful. Nathalie Blanchard reportedly told CBC that her doctor advised her to have fun as a way to forget her problems, including nights out at a local bar and short getaways to sunny destinations. She complains that Manulife told her that her Facebook photos are evidence that she’s no longer depressed and she has hired an attorney to explore next steps. Blanchard’s lawyer, Tom Lavin, stated “I don’t think for judging a mental state that Facebook is a very good tool.”

I’m trying to understand how and why these extended benefits could have been justified in the first place. Thanks to the unchecked, massive theft responsible for the downfall in economies worldwide, numerous people are suffering from serious clinical depression. What is preventing all of them from receiving a year and a half vacation sick leave on an insurance company such as Ms. Blanchard? I thought that only Americans had such a “Constitutional Right” to happiness, not Canadians.

Blanchard’s lawyer requested a new psychiatric evaluation of his client and thinks Manulife’s investigation was inappropriate. Blanchard estimates that the Facebook debacle has cost her thousands of dollars in benefits. So how much has her debacle cost policy holders in the form of the rising price of health insurance premiums? Am I missing something here?

I haven’t yet received a copy of the complaint and whether the issue concerning Facebook is the allegation of StudiVZ copying actual Facebook code or whether it considers its own “innovations” to be unique and not the natural product of providing this kind of technology. From my research, apparently both arguments were made. With the launch of Friendster in 2002 and MySpace in 2003,  it is clear that other social networks and communities existed well prior to Facebook in 2004. Can Facebook be the first “true” iteration of social networking and a protectible product innovation? Mark Zuckerberg forked over $65 million to make such an issue go away, accused of pilfering the idea from his employer and leaving to apply it to a larger audience.

But in this case, Facebook does make a point – with every new feature Facebook puts out, it seems that a similar feature finds its way into the StudiVZ and is this right? Is it actionable? Facebook originally filed a lawsuit in California, leading StudiVZ to file in a German court in the hope of obtaining a “declaratory judgment” and asserting that Facebook’s claims lacked merit. The German court’s reasoning for its decision was that StudiVZ was not trying to unfairly pass itself off as Facebook. When it was founded in 2005, Facebook was virtually unknown in Germany. Facebook announced plans to potentially file an appeal in a higher German court but would be limited to only providing new evidence – perhaps a comparison of php files (a popular web programming language) to show that there was a direct infringement of copyright.

So let’s get to the fun stuff – looking at German clones (not humans, web sites) of Internet social networking and user generated content innovations and whether StudiVZ really goes too far in resembling Facebook. (My opinion is that the red color is positively irritating on the eyes – but that goes hand in hand with the German concept of “schadenfreude” or the reveling in the pain of others!)

This article is “tell and show” – before letting you do the fun final visual comparison of StudiVZ to Facebook, we’ll list the German equivalents of popular US web sites:

YouTube  = Sevenload
MySpace = UndDu
Flickr = Photocase
del.icio.us = Mister Wong
Yelp = Qype
Facebook = StudiVZ
Digg = Yigg
Blogger and LiveJournal = blog.de and twoday.net
Meebo = Mabber
Etsy      Dawanda
Cafepress      Spreadshirt
Slide      imageloop
Flixster      MoviePilot
Twitter      Frazr, Wamadu, Sloggen

Perhaps another version in forest green would be nice?