Social Networking Watch: News on the Social Networking and Social Media Industry

Nasza Klasa Rumoured To Be For Sale For €130m

TECH CRUNCH - Oct 27 - Nasza Klasa, the largest Polish social network, is on the block for €130M. Launched in November 2006, at its height the service had ~27M registered users. The American investment fund Tiger Global is the current owner of Nasza Klasa. From January 2008, the Polish portal belonged to Forticom, an investment vehicle belonging to Digital Sky Technologies (DST), which acquired a 62% stake, but divested itself of the NK interest to focus on Russia. Nasza Klasa is similar in concept to the American-based Classmates.com, allowing its users to register from particular schools and graduation years. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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Digital Sky Completes Purchase Of Odnoklassniki.ru And Exits Nasza-Klasa.pl

TECH CRUNCH - Aug 31 - Internet investment group Digital Sky Technologies (DST) today formally announced the acquisition of Russian social network Odnoklassniki.ru. DST has bought out the minority shareholders in Forticom Group Limited – which it now fully owns – and Odnoklassniki, and interestingly transferred its interest in the Polish social network Nasza-Klasa.pl to the previous minority shareholders of Forticom as part of the deal. Russian newspaper Vedomosti pegged the deal size at between $14 to $28M. Founded in March 2006, Odnoklassniki.ru is said to gave generated revenues of $4M in 2009 from display advertising, paid services, contextual links and social games, with a net income of $11M in 2009. The social networking site claims 45M registered accounts, attracting 10M visitors on a daily basis. FULLL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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Nasza-Klasa To Merge With Gadu Gadu?

THENEWS.PL - Feb 8 - Digital Sky Technologies, a Russian investment company which holds a 75% stake in Polish social network Nasza-Klasa.pl, is reported to be holding talks with Naspers, a South African company which owns the Polish Gadu Gadu internet messaging service, over the services’ possible merger. Both DST and Naspers declined to comment to Kommersant on the speculation, but it would bring two of Poland’s biggest internet ventures together. There are 27M registered users of Nasza-Klasa.pl and 7M Gadu Gadu users globally. FULL ARTICLE @ THENEWS.PL

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Social Networks Baffle East Europe Media

BUSINESS WEEK - Oct 20 - As Facebook and other social networks explode in Eastern Europe, traditional media outlets are struggling to cash in on the trend. In September, Facebook had 271,000 users in Romania, but Hi5 boasted 2.3M users in a country of 21M. In the Czech Republic, the number of Facebook users has doubled in 2009 to 1.3M, more than a tenth of the country's population. Facebook, which hit the 300M-user mark this year globally, registered a 180% jump in the number of users in Eastern Europe in 2008 over the year before. In Poland, for example, the largest social network, Nasza-Klasa claims to be adding 20,000 new accounts daily. It had more than 11M active users at the end of 2008.Social networking has already stirred massive interest from advertisers. In the Czech Republic, the number of advertisers on Facebook has surged by 30% in 2009, according to Ataxo, an agency that sells ads on search engines. Paid advertising on social networks in the region is still marginal.  In Romania, it accounts for only 1% of online advertising, a market that last year reached 20M euros. FULL ARTICLE @ BUSINESS WEEK

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Bebo Is Hottest Irish Web Search

BELFAST TELEGRAPH -- Dec 10 -- Bebo was the most popular web search this year, while Facebook was the fastest rising search. Nasza klasa, a polish social networking, was also a fast rising search in Ireland. FULL ARTICLE @ BELFAST TELEGRAPH

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