WAYN (website)
Type of site | Travel & lifestyle social network |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2002 |
| Founder(s) | Peter Ward, Jerome Touze, Mike Lines |
| Industry | Internet |
| Employees | 21 (July 2016) |
| Divisions | London, Cape Town, Szczecin |
| URL | www |
| Current status | closed |
WAYN (an acronym for Where Are You Now?) was a social travel network. Its stated goal is to help discover where to go and meet like-minded people. WAYN was the brain child of entrepreneurs Jerome Touze and Peter Ward and was founded in 2002.
Like other social networking services, WAYN enabled its users to create a profile and upload photos. Users could search for other users and link them to their profiles as friends. The founders part-exited the business in 2006 in a $11m deal to DFJ Esprit and valuing the company at $46m. In 2015 it claims to have over 20 million users. By 2013, the site grew to 22 million registered users, growing at a daily rate of 5,000 new users and adding 25,000 new travel photos every day. In late 2016, the website was bought by Lastminute.com in an asset purchase deal at terms that were not disclosed.
The acquisition meant that Wayn's database of users and content was added to The Travel People, lastminute.com's media division. The Travel People claims to reach 43 million monthly unique visitors every month across all its brands (Lastminute.com, Rumbo, Volagratis, Bravofly and Jetcost).