Murphy on dotcom life: Friends Reunited to keep its core values under new owner

Coming from a publishing background, I could see that consumers' media
consumption was changing and starting to favour digital as they demanded
greater interactivity with those making, and breaking, the news.
Internet firms were constantly having to reinvent themselves just to
stand still and there were signs that social networking was really
starting to take off on the internet.

Friends Reunited's founders, Steve and Julie Pankhurst, and their
business partner, Jason Porter, took a back seat when I joined in 2003.
They left my team and I to it, and what an exhilarating three years it
has been, culminating in the sale to ITV in December. I'll always be
grateful to them for the opportunity to manage such an amazing company
and for having faith in me to extend the brand into new areas, such as
genealogy, dating, jobs and social networking, without losing sight of
its core values.

The deal we struck when I bought into the company was set out on one
sheet of A4, without the help of lawyers, advisers or VC backing, and
yet it stood firm until the day we signed over to ITV. There was a
valuable lesson to be learnt, which seemed to encapsulate everything
that Friends Reunited's founders were about: keep things simple. Mindful
of this rule, we have provided members with straightforward, effective
web sites, without bells or whistles, to great success.

So now we start a new chapter in Friends Reunited's history and, backed
by Britain's leading commercial TV broadcaster, it promises to be a
hugely exciting journey. Just as we've tripled the size of the business
in the past three years, so we now aim to do it again over the next
three, adding more services to bring even more people together.