Hit app schoolFeed gets snapped up by Classmates.com conglomerate

United Online, the holding company for a school-themed portfolio of websites, has just acquired schoolFeed, a Facebook app that’s been growing like a weed over the past several months.

SchoolFeed acts as a connection-finding tool for current and former high school students. As of today, the app has around 19 million members, with 100,000 new registrations added daily.

In other words, it was starting to take a significant chunk of business (or at least end-user eyeballs) away from Classmates. And for a one-year-old startup (schoolFeed was founded in July 2011), that was no mean feat. For United Online, it was easier to buy and integrate the company than continue trying to fight the app and contend with its rapidly growing popularity.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but we do know that schoolFeed will now be owned by Memory Lane, the new brand name for Classmates.com and a subsidiary of United Online. Also, the schoolFeed team, which includes former RockYou co-founder Lance Tokuda, will join the Memory Lane staff.

“We expect the acquisition of schoolFeed by Memory Lane to solidify our Classmates service as the premier high school social media platform in the U.S.,” said United Online chair Mark R. Goldston in a statement the company released today.

“We anticipate that the addition of schoolFeed’s installed base… will create an opportunity for Classmates to have a leading position on Facebook.”

SchoolFeed took a small round of funding in Februrary 2012, totaling $1.75 million from First Round Capital, Crosslink Capital, InterWest Partners, and SK Telecom Ventures.

In addition to its stable of “online nostalgia products and services” (their words, not ours), United Online also controls FTD, the floral service, ISP Juno, and a few other companies.