Tuenti to expand beyond Spain

Telefonica's Spanish social network Tuenti plans to open to foreign users in the five-year-old company's first attempt to grow outside its home country. The by-invitation only site of 11 million users will start accepting registrations from outside Spain as early as next week, Bloomberg reports, citing Tuenti CEO Zaryn Dentzel. Additionally, Tuenti plans to hire 100 engineers this year. Tuenti currently has 226 employees. "There's a lot that's going to happen in social networking and this is just the beginning.[...]Before we really wanted to focus just on this market. It was almost kind of an obsessive focus.", Dentzel said. Accordingto the Tuenti executive, "the social network is "obsessively focused" on developing mobile offerings. In the longer term, Tuenti plans to leverage the presence of Telefonica, which operates in countries including the UK,Germany, and Latin America to extend its reach beyond Spain. "The reason that we did the deal with Telefonica was to give us the support and resources of a partner that would allow us to be a global player," Dentzel said. "It's absolutely a priority," he said.