WAYN Reportedly Close To $200M AOL Sale

Social travel site WAYN is allegedly in talks with AOL over a possible $200m sale. WAYN is one of the fastest growing travel social networking sites in the UK with a presence in over 220 countries and over nine million members. Members from WAYN are able to create a profile, log their recent and future holidays, as well as locate other members based on their location.

At present the deal is being denied by WAYN, with marketing manager Anika Erskine stating: "We are absolutely not for sale. We're not considering it at the moment. We're excited about what we've done and the partnerships we've signed. We've just launched a new version of our travel guides, with tonnes of content and new services. We're very much pushing down that route - cutting edge mobile services, UK focused and rolling out across other countries." 

Despite the denials, uk.techcrunch.com, a blog covering Web 2.0 and Mobile start-ups reports that "three well-placed sources have all independently quoted the $200m figure" and "named AOL as the prospective buyer".  The fact that no deal has been announced yet is said to be down to negotiations over an earn-out clause proposed by the founders which is allegedly proving to be a sticking point.

If the deal goes through it would rank amongst the biggest sales of a UK social networking site yet, as well as a profitable move for founders Jerome Touze (CEO), Peter Ward and CTO Mike Lines. In 2006 WAYN received $11m in funding, including money from Brent Hoberman, co-founder of Lastminute.com. Other investors included Adrian Critchlow and Andy Phillipps of Active Hotels, David Soskin and Hugo Burge of Cheapflights, Steve Pankhurst of Friends Reunited and Constant Tedder, founder of Jagex, which operates online multi player game RuneScape.

Critics of WAYN have pointed to the fact that the site is “not very sticky” and although established early in 2002, WAYN does resemble a number of other social networks based upon travel, among them the US-based RealTravel.