Friends Reunited To Close After 15 Years

WIRED - Jan 18 - The website has had a turbulent history. Pankhurst launched the website in 2000, by 2003 it had 3M members, and was seen as an established rival to MySpace and, later, Facebook. By 2005 it was sold to ITV, for more than £125 million, in 2009 the website was sold to DC Thomson for just £25 million. Then, in 2012, Friends Reunited was rebooted as "memory box". In 2014 DC Thompson offered the website's ownership back to Pankhurst. Pankhurst now says he is creating a new social network, called Liife, that will be a way for people to store memories - but he said it will "no way [be] a replacement for Friends Reunited."