WAYN (an

acronym An acronym is a type of abbreviation consisting of a phrase whose only pronounced elements are the initial letters or initial sounds of words inside that phrase. Acronyms are often spelled with the initial Letter (alphabet), letter of each wor ...

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 service A social networking service (SNS), or social networking site, is a type of online social media platform which people use to build social networks or social relationships with other people who share similar personal or career content, interest ...

s, 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).

History

WAYN was founded in 2004 in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

by Jerome Touze (Co-CEO), Peter Ward (Co-CEO) and Mike Lines (CTO), after Jerome came up with the idea to connect people based on their location while having a few beers in their local pub. Jerome had the original concept, but he didn't have any technology skills to make it a reality. He was working at the time at a consultancy firm in London, and connected with Peter Ward with a likeminded approach to entrepreneurship. Peter, was very close friends with Mike Lines, who was the lynchpin in the whole program and built the entir wayn service including its full website and backend services single handidly. WAYN initially grew through word-of-mouth and reached almost 50,000 members by the end of 2004. Following its relaunch in May 2005 it reached over 2.5 million members by the end of 2005. On 26 March 2012 the site claimed "over 19.1m members". The business started with initial seed funding in 2003 from the original founder of

Friends Reunited Friends Reunited was a portfolio of social networking websites based upon the themes of reunion with research, dating and job-hunting. The first and eponymous website was created by a husband-and-wife team in the classic back-bedroom Internet s ...

. In 2006, the WAYN Founders managed to complete a part exit of the company for $11 million from

DFJ Esprit Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) is an American venture capital firm. In January 2019, DFJ Venture, the early-stage team, spun out and formed Threshold Ventures. DFJ Growth continues to be managed by co-founder John Fisher and co-founders Mark Bail ...

and attracting famous internet entrepreneurs as investors such as

Brent Hoberman Brent Shawzin Hoberman (born 25 November 1968) is a British entrepreneur and investor. During the dot-com boom, he co-founded lastminute.com with Martha Lane Fox in 1998, where he was CEO from its inception, before selling the business to Sabr ...

(ex-founder of lastminute.com), Hugo Burge (CEO of cheapflights.co.uk), Adrian Critchlow and Andy Phillips (ex-founders of Active Hotels) and

Constant Tedder Jagex Limited is a British video game developer and Video game publisher, publisher based at the Cambridge Science Park in Cambridge, England. It is best known for ''RuneScape'' and ''Old School RuneScape'', both free-to-play massively multipl ...

(ex-CEO of

Jagex Jagex Limited is a British video game developer and publisher based at the Cambridge Science Park in Cambridge, England. It is best known for ''RuneScape'' and ''Old School RuneScape'', both free-to-play massively multiplayer online role-play ...

, an online gaming company) and was referred to at the time as the '

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 ...

of Travel'.

Services

WAYN users could post photos from their trips. Registered users sent and received messages using

email Electronic mail (usually shortened to email; alternatively hyphenated e-mail) is a method of transmitting and receiving Digital media, digital messages using electronics, electronic devices over a computer network. It was conceived in the ...

, discussion forums,

E-card E-card is an electronic postcard or greeting card, with the primary difference being that it is created using digital media instead of paper or other traditional materials. E-cards are available in many different mediums, usually on various Inter ...

SMS Short Message Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile phones exchange short text messages, t ...

, and

instant messages Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of synchronous computer-mediated communication involving the immediate ( real-time) transmission of messages between two or more parties over the Internet or another computer network. Originally involv ...

and Q&A. WAYN provided a destination browsing service to discover ''Where to go next'' and WAYN members could interact with each other and ask questions on the destinations through a Questions & Answers service. The site also provided ''Social Opinions'', which generated more than 25,000 opinions daily in 2014. In 2015, WAYN announced major strategic partnerships with

Booking.com Booking.com is one of the largest online travel agencies. It is headquartered in Amsterdam, and is a subsidiary of Booking Holdings. Booking.com provides lodging reservation services for approximately 3.4 million properties, including 475,000 ...

to offer hotels booking to its users as well as Viator to offer tours and activities booking.

Contact import

Like many other social media sites, WAYN encouraged its users to invite their friends, which in turn led to the contacts of the members to receive an invitation to join. In 2006, some members vented their frustration, claiming they were not aware that an invitation would be sent to their contacts. The company acknowledged that this process could be improved and subsequently changed the way in which invitations were generated and has also signed up with Return Path, one of the few whitelisting companies in the world that certified Emails Best Practice at the time.

Use

WAYN

Alexa Internet Alexa Internet, Inc. was a web traffic analysis company based in San Francisco, California. It was founded as an independent company by Brewster Kahle and Bruce Gilliat in 1996. Alexa provided web traffic data, global rankings, and other info ...

traffic ranking was 12,251 as of March 2017 down more than 2,000 position from the prior year. It claimed in 2013 to house user data for over 22 million users in 193 different countries.

Monetisation

WAYN.com commercialised its website through advertising. The site also offered a membership service (VIP) for users who wished to access to travel and lifestyle benefits. Later, the site launched a travel booking service for users to book their hotels and tours globally.

History

Services

Contact import

Use

Monetisation

References

Further reading