Dutch teenagers sell social network Amiz.fr

Written on 3rd October 2008                                                                                                              6 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Amiz.fr, a French social network with over two million members has been acquired by French Steek SA. But the buying party isn’t all too interesting if you take the selling guys in account. Two Dutch fellas, Sebastiaan Moeys (19) and Tijmen Crone (20), founded the network in the summer of 2006 – right after highschool graduation.

The service offers its members various ways of communication and self-expression through messaging, blogging, pictures, videos and music – the usual social network stuff. But like more national networks – StudiVZ in Germany and Hyves in Holland – it grew rapidly to the before mentioned two million users.

Rumors about a possible exit buzzed around on TechCrunch France last Wednesday. In a press release, Moeys confirmed them today. He told me earlier that they had been facing scalability problems but that users kept coming back anyway. Moeys: “”The network wasn’t sold at its peak traffic. But given the large base of members, the service obviously didn’t go for free”. It didn’t make him a millionaire though. Exact financial details were not disclosed.

The release also mentions that Hyves and Netlog were also interested parties, they didn’t make the cut though.