Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Friends Reunited on the Block Again

We all look and wonder at the lustre of social networking sites. One minute they are the vision of a student or wanabee millionaire, the next they are attracting significant traffic and wild market valuations. However for every success there are hundreds of failures and success does not always mean that they are sustainable.

Look at MySpace with its starlets, Ms Allen and the Artic Monkeys. Once the ruler of the social sites, it now has to sit below Facebook. We once thought Sellstudentbooks.com was going to make it but alas not. We often have joined these sites and once the initial momentum is over, realised that they often aren’t the universe they claim, are hard work to maintain and left them as quickly.

Now what we would regard as the granddaddy of them all, Friends Reunited looks like it is going further down the slippery pole, with widely reported rumours that ITV may sell it for just £15 million. In December 2005 ITV paid £175 million for the site! However, ITV still reported a £18 million contribution from Friends Reunited in 2008, though this was down from £22 million in 2007. So a sale may earn out quickly if the friends stay reunited.

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