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Friends Reunited, the parent of Genes Reunited, has been sold to DC Thomson, the company that publishes Beano and other comics.
That news broke a few days ago
I have just seen this item on the web:-
Beano and Friends could hit the family jackpot
The Observer, Sunday 9 August
The trajectory of Friends Reunited is that of social media in microcosm. It began as a subscription site, but was overtaken by free ones such as Facebook and MySpace; its founders sold it to ITV for a heady £170m; now it is being offloaded for just £25m to DC Thomson, publishers of the Beano.
DC Thomson plans to combine Friends' family history site with its own to create the UK's biggest genealogy operation. Researching family trees is hugely popular with older people, a group disdained in webworld because most start-up entrepreneurs are in their twenties - even though mature adults have more money and are less likely to be driven from one site to another by the latest fad.
I wonder what that means for us??????????????
aahhhhhhhh now I see ..... Friday's news:-
New Friends Reunited owner plans over-50s dating website
DC Thomson has no plans to scrap or sell any of newly acquired sites and plans to integrate them with its own businesses
Mark Sweney
guardian.co.uk, Friday 7 August 2009 07.24 BST
Friends Reunited's 60 staff will all keep their jobs under new owner DC Thomson, with the Beano publisher planning to launch an over-50s dating service to appeal to users of its genealogy business Find My Past.
DC Thomson, which yesterday acquired Friends Reunited from ITV for £25m, has also admitted that it has approached the Office of Fair Trading in a bid to gain clearance for the deal, which will see two of the three biggest online subscription genealogy businesses in the UK merge.
Brightsolid, the DC Thomson subsidiary that runs Find My Past, plans to integrate Friends Reunited's social networking, dating and genealogy operations with its own businesses. It has no plans to scrap or sell any of the Friends Reunited operations.
One of the first plans under consideration is the launch of a Friends Reunited dating service specifically targeting the over-50s. Friends Reunited has traditionally attracted an older demographic that has the potential to fit in with the generally older users of Find My Past. Its Genes Reunited site takes a much more mass-market approach than Find My Past, which is used by more "hardcore" genealogy buffs.
Brightsolid has referred the deal to the Office of Fair Trading because it the company about 50% of the UK online paid-for genealogy market. The other main player in the UK is US giant Ancestry.com.
However, the company does not expect there to be issues as the 50% share is of a very niche market sector when the wider world of free family history resources is considered.
so GR and findmypast will be owned by the same company.
I ask again .... what does this mean for us?????
sylvia
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