FriendsReunited bought from ITV by genealogy specialist Brightsolid

 

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Posted on 18 Mar 2010 at 11:27

UK company Brightsolid, a subsidiary of publishers D.C. Thomson, has acquired the Friends Reunited Group from ITV for £25m after seven months of scrutiny by the Competition Commission.

The Friends Reunited Group includes genealogy site Genes Reunited, and the Commission was worried that, along with Brightsolid's other online genealogy sites such as findmypast.co.uk, the company might have a monopoly in this area.

Brightsolid has overseen a re-design of the Friends Reunited web site, however the company said it would keep the genealogy sites separate. Chris Van der Kuyl, Brightsolid's CEO said: "It is fantastic news to finally get the green light from the Competition Commission for the completion of the deal."

"It has certainly been a frustrating period for all involved and meant that we were unable to take any control of the brands until this point," Van der Kuyl continued. "We’re now looking forward to working with the team at Friends Reunited Group to agreeing and implementing the new ideas to shape the direction of this exciting business."

Friends Reunited claims to have 20.6m members, and many people have reported receiving an email out of the blue asking them to update their profile on the site. Whether the site can hope to compete with Facebook, its most obvious competitor, is another matter. We noticed that the "Sharing" option on the site only lets you share via email, and doesn't use the more common option of letting you share via Twitter and Facebook.

Many people signed up to Friends Reunited when it first launched, as it made it easy to find old school friends. However, we reckon most people receiving an update email from Friends Reunited will simple use it to find their school friends' Facebook profiles, if they haven't already got them.

Author: Barry de la Rosa