Forticom, an Internet firm based in the Baltic states, has bought a majority stake nasza-klasa.pl, Poland's most popular online social networking website, the company which runs the latter said on Tuesday.
"The directors of the Nasza Klasa company decided to sell 60 percent of their shares to Forticom," Nasza Klasa spokesperson Joanna Gajewska told AFP, declining to specify the sale price.
Gajewska said that Forticom had also bought a 10-percent share in European Founders, a German venture capital firm supporting budding websites and Internet-based companies.
Continues Below↓Created just a year-and-a-half ago by 24-year-old Maciej Popowicz, a computing student in the south-west Polish hi-tech hub of Wroclaw, nasza-klasa.pl works on the same principles as Britain's Friends Reunited and France's Copains d'avant.
It has taken Poland's Internet world by storm, and claims 11 million users, giving it widest coverage and penetration in this country of 38 million people, well ahead of YouTube's 6,4 million Polish-based users.
According to Polish media estimates nasza-klasa.pl is worth about 300-million zlotys (about R1-billion).
Forticom operates several websites in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, notably the "One" brand Internet portal.
