FLEDGLING IRISH online social networking group Weedle is to create 50 new jobs at its base in Blackrock, Co Dublin.
The company, which already employs 19 people here, will create the jobs in the development of next generation web applications over the next three years.
Weedle has developed a free website that allows people with professional services, trades, crafts, skills to showcase their products and services online.
The website has been live for three months and claims to have attracted users in more than 50 countries. The project is supported by Enterprise Ireland.
“There is no free large-scale simple way to match people with skills to those who need them,” Weedle founder Iain MacDonald said yesterday by way of explaining its unique selling point.
Announcing the jobs yesterday, Enterprise minister Batt O’Keeffe said: “Weedle typifies the strong capacity of indigenous Irish firms to innovate in niche markets with high-potential online platforms that can spur the next generation of global internet brand leaders.”
Weedle was founded in 2008 by Mr MacDonald, former chief executive of telecoms company Perlico; and Michael Gallagher, who has worked in telecommunications and financial services in the US and Ireland.
Its backers include Michael Smurfit, former head of the Smurfit Kappa packaging group.
Mr MacDonald sold Perlico to mobile phone giant Vodafone in 2008 for €60 million. He earned about €12 million from that deal for his 20 per cent in the company.
In March, Weedle announced it had received $4 million in funding to expand its social media platform globally.
The announcement came as part of a trade mission to the US led by Taoiseach Brian Cowen and organised by Enterprise Ireland.
