A WEB entrepreneur who made his first fortune at 19 has received £1.3m in backing for his new venture.

Playfire, a social networking service for computer game players, tracks scores and rankings on the Microsoft Xbox and Sony PlayStation3 and tells users what their friends are playing.

It is run by Kieran O’Neill, who previously set up a video sharing website called Holy Lemon when he was studying for his GCSEs. It was sold for £750,000 when he was 19.

Playfire has raised funds from Skype founder Niklas Zennstrom and Michael Birch, who set up Bebo. Other backers include digital entrepreneurs William Reeve and Alex Chesterman and Brent Hoberman of Lastminute.com fame.

Set up in February last year, the company has 250,000 members. O’Neill hopes to rival GameSpot, which was bought last year by CBS, and IGN, which is now part of News Corporation, the ultimate owner of The Sunday Times. O’Neill, now 22, also established PSU.com, a games review website for the Sony PlayStation.

Zennstrom last week resolved a legal dispute with the new owners of Skype. He and partner Janus Friis will take a 14% stake and boardroom representation after agreeing to drop an action over the technology that powers the internet phone service. Skype is being bought from eBay for $1.9 billion (£1.1 billion) by a consortium including Silver Lake Partners and Index Ventures.

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