Anybody want to buy a social networking site that’s losing money? Well, according to an article in the Guardian, Friends Reunited seems to be on the block. I don’t know if Genes Reunited will be caught up in any sale, but it would not surprise me. Following is a teaser…
Michael Grade is understood to have put the social networking website Friends Reunited up for sale as part of a wider cost cutting drive.
Grade is expected to confirm his decision to jettison the business, which helps people stay in touch with school and university friends and has branched out into genealogy, when ITV reports its annual results next month.
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ITV snapped up Friends Reunited in 2005, before Grade arrived, in a £120m deal that made multi-millionaires of its founders. Husband-and-wife team Steve and Julie Pankhurst, who set up the website with their business partner Jason Porter during the dotcom boom, are estimated to have pocketed about £30m.
Under the terms of the deal, ITV was to pay a further £55m this year and at least part of that cash is understood to have been paid, even though Friends Reunited has since been outpaced by the arrival of sites such as Facebook.
Read the full article in the February 15, 2009 edition of the Guardian.