The Meet Group, Inc. (formerly MeetMe) owns several dating
app networking services including MeetMe,
hi5,
LOVOO, Growlr,
Skout, and
Tagged. The company has offices in
New Hope, Pennsylvania
New Hope is a borough (Pennsylvania), borough in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 2,612 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. New Hope is located approximately north of Philadelphia, and lies on the west b ...
,
Philadelphia
Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...
,
San Francisco
San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...
,
Dresden
Dresden (; ; Upper Saxon German, Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; , ) is the capital city of the States of Germany, German state of Saxony and its second most populous city after Leipzig. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, 12th most p ...
, and
Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...
.
History
Two siblings, Dave and Catherine Cook, created myYearbook during their
Spring break
Spring break is a vacation period at universities and schools that includes the Easter holiday, and takes place in early Northern Hemisphere spring. Introduced in the U.S. during the 1930s, spring break has been observed in Europe since t ...
of 2005. They persuaded their older brother Geoff, who had founded EssayEdge and ResumeEdge from his Harvard dorm room, to invest in their project. At the launch of the site, Dave was a junior in high school and Catherine was a sophomore; the project was initially activated at
Montgomery High School, in suburban
New Jersey
New Jersey is a U.S. state, state located in both the Mid-Atlantic States, Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States, Northeastern regions of the United States. Located at the geographic hub of the urban area, heavily urbanized Northeas ...
where they attended. The site was created entirely by workers in India.
In 2006, myYearbook raised $4.1 million from
U.S. Venture Partners
U.S. Venture Partners (USVP) is a venture capital investment firm specializing in early-stage ventures in enterprise software, cybersecurity, consumer, e-commerce, healthcare, and IT-enabled healthcare services. The venture capital partnership is ...
and
First Round Capital
First Round Capital is a US-based venture capital firm that specializes in providing seed-stage funding to technology companies.
Founded by Josh Kopelman and Howard Morgan First Round typically provides seed-stage funding and focuses on po ...
. In 2008, it raised $13 million in a Series B round.
In July 2011, myYearbook announced it had agreed to be acquired by Latino social networking site Quepasa. In June 2012, the company formed from the combination of myYearbook and Quepasa was renamed MeetMe.
In October 2016, MeetMe acquired
Skout for $55 million.
On April 3, 2017, the company acquired
if(we)
if(we) is a social and mobile technology company based in San Francisco, California and owned by The Meet Group. It was originally known as Tagged Inc. and owns and operates social networks Tagged (website), Tagged.com and Hi5, Hi5.com and anima ...
and rebranded to The Meet Group.
In September 2017, Meet Group acquired German dating app Lovoo for $70 million USD.
In 2020, The Meet Group was acquired by
ProSiebenSat.1 Media
ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE (officially abbreviated as P7S1, formerly ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG) is a German mass media and digital company based in Unterföhring near Munich. It operates in three segments: Entertainment, Dating and Commerce & Venture ...
with a parent company, ParshipMeet Group, being formed to manage both The Meet Group and
Parship
Parship (or Parship GmbH) is an online dating agency based in Hamburg, Germany. It was part of the Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. Its stated goal is to encourage and forge long-term partnerships.
History
Founded in 2000, Parship went on ...
.
In 2022,
Tumblr
Tumblr (pronounced "tumbler") is a microblogging and Social networking service, social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007 and is owned by American company Automattic. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content ...
announced its livestreaming service Tumblr Live, based on The Meet Group's product Livebox. In 2024, Tumblr announced that they would be discontinuing Tumblr Live as of January 24, with options for users to migrate to MeetMe.
See also
*
Facebook
Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...
*
Myspace
Myspace (formerly stylized as MySpace, currently myspace; and sometimes my␣, with an elongated Whitespace character#Substitute images, open box symbol) is a social networking service based in the United States. Launched on August 1, 2003, it w ...
*
List of social networking services
A social networking service is an online platform that people use to build social networks or social relationships with other people who share similar personal or career interests, activities, backgrounds or real-life connections.
This is a li ...
References
External links
*
CEO Geoff Cook Interview; Online Personals Watch, October 2013*
ttps://www.inc.com/magazine/201205/liz-welch/catherine-cook-and-geoff-cook-myyearbook.html Inc. magazine profile of Catherine and Geoff Cook
{{DEFAULTSORT:Myyearbook
American social networking websites
Companies formerly listed on the Nasdaq
Internet properties established in 2005
Yearbooks
2014 initial public offerings
Companies based in Bucks County, Pennsylvania