Friends Reunited Press

6th August 2009

BRIGHTSOLID ACQUIRES FRIENDS REUNITED

brightsolid today announced it is to acquire Friends Reunited Group from ITV plc for £25 million. The completion of the deal is subject to clearance by the competition authorities.

brightsolid is a fast growing online innovation business owned by DC Thomson, one of the largest privately owned media and publishing groups in the country. A key part of brightsolid’s strategy is building businesses that link “people and places” on the internet.

Friends Reunited is the original social network with 20.6 million members. It was launched in 2000 to put old school friends back in touch with each other and swiftly became a British media phenomenon. Sister site Genes Reunited was launched in 2003 and is currently the UK’s largest family history website with over 9 million members worldwide and 650 million names listed. Together with Friends Reunited Dating, the group attracts three million unique users per month.

The acquisition of Friends Reunited Group would create Britain’s leading genealogy business by bringing together Genes Reunited and findmypast.com (which operate the official 1901 and 1911 Census websites respectively in association with The National Archives) and ScotlandsPeople in partnership with General Register Office for Scotland, the National Archives of Scotland and the Court of the Lord Lyon.

Chris van der Kuyl, CEO brightsolid, said: “We see the acquisition of Friends Reunited Group as an exciting opportunity to provide new focus for and build on the iconic status of the Friends Reunited brands. Between them these brands attract over three million unique users per month. This also marks another step forward in the future strategy of brightsolid, widening its offering to the consumer marketplace, in particular by creating Britain’s leading genealogy business.”

Cont…/

Andy Baker, MD Friends Reunited adds: “We are delighted that brightsolid can see the great value and future potential in the Friends Reunited Group. brightsolid is an innovative online group and by bringing our companies together this way we can build the Friends Reunited business to offer something new and different to our customers. We look forward to working with Chris and the team to develop the business further.”

brightsolid is led by digital media entrepreneur CEO Chris van der Kuyl, who joined in October 2007. The broad reach of its online innovation means The Friends Reunited Group will also benefit from brightsolid’s resilient data centre and managed hosting services.

brightsolid was advised by HMT Corporate Finance on this transaction and Macfarlanes provided the legal services.

ENDS

Notes to Editors

For further information, please contact:

Tony Langham
tonyl@lansons.com
Direct dial: 0207 294 3617
Mobile: 07979 692287

Inez de Koning
inezd@lansons.com
Direct dial: 0207 294 3623
Mobile: 07940 526021

Katie Hayward
katieh@lansons.com
Direct dial: 020 7294 3631
Mobile: 07809 441803

Jennifer Comerford
Jenniferc@lansons.com
Direct dial: 0207 294 3678
Mobile: 07977 473045

About brightsolid

brightsolid began life in 1995 as Scotland Online and is a leading UK independent provider of IT business services to large public and private sector organisations.

brightsolid helps its clients to design and implement high volume, high availability, high performance online products and services. It has done this successfully since the mid 1990s when it became one of the pioneering internet companies of the time. brightsolid has two divisions, online publishing and online technology.

brightsolid’s online technology division is a leading UK independent provider of online IT business services and an ISP delivering business-critical services. The company’s online technology division specialises in managing clients’ information availability and online presence through hosting, internet access, applications and business continuity products and services.

Business Continuity is ensured with dual location and disaster recovery services, including a fully equipped Workplace Recovery suite managed via our partnership with SunGard. brightsolid operates its own data centre underpinned by a resilient and secure network with dual location and disaster recovery options. brightsolid takes its environmental responsibilities very seriously and is ISO14001 certified, which is the standard designed to help organisations minimise how their operations negatively affect the environment.

brightsolid’s online publishing division has significant expertise in the digitisation and management of records in a fast-growing online market. It manages ScotlandsPeople.gov.uk, a partnership between the General Register Office for Scotland, the National Archives of Scotland and the Court of the Lord Lyon.

In 2007, brightsolid acquired findmypast.com, an online family history site. findmypast.com was the first website to put the complete birth, marriage and death indexes for England and Wales online. The company also successfully launched ancestorsonboard.com, the online passenger lists records resource, for The National Archives in January 2006. It included details of over 24 million travellers, including the historic details of the Titanic’s maiden voyage. brightsolid recently launched the group’s first, and Scotland’s only, online magazine ‘Discover My Past Scotland’.

Headquartered in Dundee, the company is owned by the publishers D.C. Thomson and has offices in Edinburgh and London.

www.brightsolid.com

About DC Thomson
DC Thomson & Co Ltd is a long-established, family-owned and run company which has been publishing newspapers and magazines for well over 100 years.

The firm produces more than 100 million copies of their many titles each year including respected local and national newspapers, books, annuals and a range of comics and magazines for both adults and children.

DC Thomson has also brought to life some of the UK’s most iconic characters – such as The Beano’s Dennis and Gnasher and The Dandy’s Desperate Dan.

Founded in 1905 it remains a major Scottish publisher, operating from three sites in Dundee, and branch offices in Glasgow, Manchester and London, as well as a chain of local district offices which help the Company retain its links with the communities they serve.

The company has an unrivalled portfolio, owning other companies in the publishing arena such as Aberdeen Journals Ltd, Parragon Publishing Limited, Peter Haddock Publishing Ltd and Puzzler Media Holdings Limited, as well as brightsolid.

Friends Reunited continues to add new features to its social networking site following the successful uptake of its recently launched Groups section. The latest site release, which went live this week, sees the addition of a chat function and photo tagging, enriching the experience for its 21m members.

The instant chat function enables members to converse about their passions and interests with like-minded individuals, contributing to a 135% increase in usage of these interest based Groups since the beginning of the year. While photo tagging is helping Friends Reunited open up the millions of photos that have been added to the site to new audiences.

Jonathan Clark, Head of Friends Reunited, said: “We’re continuing to make the site more sociable; Photo tagging is just one of the ways we are improving the visibility of what members are doing on the website.  We have millions of visitors every month and hundreds of thousands of profile updates and photos added, but we used to make it pretty difficult to see all this great stuff. 

“In just a few days we’ve had 30,000 photos tagged; people are now able to share their photos with their friends more easily, but they’re also discovering photos of themselves which have been on the site for years.”

The Groups, launched in October last year, allow members to create their own communities or join an existing group setup by Friends Reunited. They can upload images, start topics and now join in conversations with members of the group. Each group is added to one of 26 categories which include groups like Sports, Films and Family and Relationships.

Craig Nayman, Commercial Director of Friends Reunited, says: “It’s great to see members finding others they can share their interests with, from motoring to travel. It’s also proving interesting to advertisers, who see value in tapping into the passion and context these communities have created. This alongside our growing lifestage and interest based database is letting us deliver some really interesting adverting solutions”.

~Ends~

NOTES TO THE EDITOR

 About Friends Reunited

Friends Reunited is the original social network with 20.6 million members, of which 2.9 million were added in 2008. It was launched in 2000 as a back-bedroom hobby to put old school friends back in touch with each other and swiftly became a British media phenomenon. In 2005 Friends Reunited was acquired by ITV and in April 2008 dropped its subscription charge and evolved into an interactive social networking site for grown-ups.

For more information contact Carolynne Bull-Edwards

on: 01883 717468 or email press@friendsreunited.co.uk