ITV buys Friends Reunited

[Wardy]

Tweet

"Friends Reunited has been flogged. As widely expected, the reunion web site has been swallowed by ITV for £120m in cash and paper. A further £55m is payable if the operation hits certain numbers in 2009."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/06/itv_friends/

Great that such a simple idea can be worth so much!

Cheers
Wardy

[zaq]

Thanks for news wardy.The price doesnt surprise me with the sky owner buying up popular sites due too a lot of ad money going from offline to online, its a good investment i thing.

[KieronD]

Good for them, nice price too.

[KirstyM]

I met one of the blokes that runs Friends Reunited at a conference a few years ago. Nice bloke who I think deserves his payday.

To think he laughed at his wife when she came up with that idea to start with. See guys? You should all listen to us gals, sometimes we actually make a fair bit of sense.

[Danum]

It could be a tad overpriced IMO? Then, i don't know a great deal. Didn't they have it up for sale for £25 million at first and there were no takers then?

In months for my old year that had 300 people there's only been 1 new person and people updating it is very rare. If that is happening in other schools then they've reached saturation point as to who would want to post there and those that have the internet.

Paid to join for a year but that was only to get old friends email addresses and won't be paying again. Would suppose most people do the same and pay only once.

[bedazzledaz]

Paid to join for a year but that was only to get old friends email addresses and won't be paying again. Would suppose most people do the same and pay only once.

What about the kids of today who in 10 years want to find their old school friends? and then their kids, it's something that will always have a market surely?

[Danum]

What about the kids of today who in 10 years want to find their old school friends? and then their kids, it's something that will always have a market surely?

True but barely anyone was on the internet when i left in '97 so needed to get their emails. Presumably nowadays kids leaving have all their friends email address/IM details.

[richardc]

This really one of those situations where 1 + 1 = 1000

Only about 50% of their existing revenues come from the original friendsreunited.co.uk school friends site and they predict this will decrease further each year as they continue to expand into other areas.

A big growth area for them is in dating and genealogy. ITV can feature some of their sites in TV programmes or even create whole programmes based around the brands.

Yes they have paid a little more than 20 x profits but with the resources of ITV, they should be able significantly increase profits at a much greater rate than friends reunited could on their own.

Richard

[pricethat]

Yes but they dont keep them, you know what young people are like and the part of friends reunited isnt just about your friends, people will always stay close to their "real" friends. But its the people that you are "friendly" with or at least was that you sometimes feel like you would love to know what they are up to. Normally happens with midlife crisis or something i guess

In a world where people buy anything and everything because thats what people do i can see a lot of worse things to spend your money on.

[pericom]

Seems over priced to me.

ITV could just promote itv.com or another brand why pay so much for a database of ex-students ?

[haggul]

Because when you get your bi-weekly emails telling you that new people have joined your year (where the hell are they then) that mail will be laden with adverts - as will the site (more than currently anyway). They've purchased a massive newsletter mailing list.

[zaq]

Seems over priced to me.

ITV could just promote itv.com or another brand why pay so much for a database of ex-students ?

Yes pericom exstudents now adults you can market credit cards, loans too

Still its nice £120m now they can take life easy see the world and after a few years if they get bored come back with another great idea

p.s i think thay would have made a lot of money form this affiliate game

[Fraser]

In months for my old year that had 300 people there's only been 1 new person and people updating it is very rare.

On the radio yesterday the guy who wrote a book about friends reunited said they were still adding new members at a rate of 3000 a day.