Friends Reunited in new relaunch

Friends Reunited, the first website which many consumers used to rekindle teenage love, is poised to be relaunched yet again after signing up its original founders to rejuvenate the brand.
The website was first launched in 2000 by husband and wife team Steve and Julia Pankhurst along with Jason Porter and at its height had 15 million users.
By 2005, they had sold the business to ITV for £120m, trousering an estimated £30m each in the process. But the new ownership proved a disaster as ITV failed to build on the site and it lost ground to the likes of Facebook and Twitter.
Now Beano and Dandy publisher DC Thomson, which bought the business back in 2009 for £25m, is aiming to bring back the good times by handing the reins back to Pankhurst and Porter.
Pankhurst told The Sunday Times that he was under no illusions about the scale of the task ahead. He added: “It’s going to be tough, but I am really excited. I have dabbled with a few things over the years but nothing really got off the ground.”
He predicts the first new services will launch within three months. Pankhurst said: “It’s going to be about looking back and rebuilding your past and puttng your life into context.”
The company also has a highly successful offshoot – Genes Reunited – launched in the UK in 2003. Since then it has grown to become one of the UK’s largest genealogy websites, with over 13 million members and over 780 million names listed.