ITV in £25m Friends Reunited sale

scooter · Post by **scooter** » Thu Aug 06, 2009 7:35 am

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8186840.stm

I'm guessing that Brightsolid (owners of the Scotlandspeople site etc.) have also bought Genesreunited too?

Quite a hit financially for ITV!

Cheers,

Scott

Post by **Merlot** » Thu Aug 06, 2009 9:36 am

A very large hit for ITV, I heard on TV that they paid £170m for GR.

daj · Post by **daj** » Thu Aug 06, 2009 4:26 pm

I'm surprised as I think Friends Reunited is a dead horse now. It was much bigger several years ago but people have moved on and the site has now.

GR still seems to have a bit of a following, but again it needs a face lift.

Andrew C. · Post by **Andrew C.** » Thu Aug 06, 2009 4:56 pm

£120 million I had heard being quoted for how much ITV paid for it. I presume they have got Genes Reunited as well so Brightsolid could be cornering the British genealogy market.

Post by **Tracey** » Thu Aug 06, 2009 6:19 pm

Could be why ITV have a £100 million loss this year - been on the news all day.

Ooops no its £105 million

scooter · Post by **scooter** » Thu Aug 06, 2009 7:55 pm

I haven't looked at Friendsreunited in years. It was a good read at first, made contact with a few school friends, who I then inevitably lost contact with again, and then found them several years later on Facebook.

I reckon they were running out of ideas when they started implementing tools such as 'street reunited', and wondered when they might try out 'bus ride reunited' or even 'lost luggage reunited'. I'm very interested to see what brightsolid will do with it, particularly the 'genes' side of things.

Still, a hefty loss for ITV, though I'm sure the sites founders are relieved they sold up when they did. :D

Ann In the UK · Post by **Ann In the UK** » Thu Aug 06, 2009 8:45 pm

I think it probably took a while for people to realise why they'd 'lost contact' with most of their old school mates in the first place - or was that just me