{"id":273,"date":"2008-05-27T10:57:08","date_gmt":"2008-05-27T10:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/parkesy.wordpress.com\/2008\/05\/27\/friends-reunited-free\/"},"modified":"2008-05-27T10:57:08","modified_gmt":"2008-05-27T10:57:08","slug":"friends-reunited-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2008\/05\/27\/friends-reunited-free\/","title":{"rendered":"Friends Reunited – free"},"content":{"rendered":"

I meant to blog about this a while ago but completely forgot about it, which is kind of like friends reunited to be honest<\/p>\n

Friends Reunited<\/a> has been around for ages (July 2000, ages on the Internet<\/a>!) and started with a simple idea.<\/p>\n

Put people in touch with lost friends<\/p>\n

This was mainly old school friends but the site grew to add workplaces, teams, even neighbourhoods<\/p>\n

The site was massively popular here in the UK. We even had Friends Reunited themed TV shows, music CD’s and stories in the media of marriages ending as the husband has run off with his childhood sweetheart after getting in touch on the site.<\/p>\n

However, the main problem (in my opinion) was it’s business model. You could set yourself up a profile for free but to actually send someone a message you had to pay a yearly subscription fee which was originally \u00a35. I think it went up after the site was brought by ITV who I think were looking to grab some of that early web site advertising cash<\/p>\n

\u00a35 was not really a lot and I paid my cash but the problem was not enough people did. So you would send someone a message and never get a reply as they didn’t pay for the subscription. I still check the site from time to time but hardly ever use it and I imagine I’m not the only one.<\/p>\n

Then when sites like MySpace, Facebook, etc became popular I figured Friends Reunited would have to do one of two things.<\/p>\n

1) Have a re-think about how to make money<\/p>\n

2) Pack up and go home<\/p>\n

So it wasn’t a massive surprise to me recently when I got an email to let me know that friends reunited is now free<\/p>\n

I logged on to have a look and they have revamped the site visuals but I think it’s possibly too late to get back to being as popular as they once were<\/p>\n

They do have other offshoots such as Gene’s Reunited<\/a> which from what I can gather is pretty popular<\/p>\n

It’ll be interesting to see what the future holds for the site<\/p>\n

EDIT – Wikipedia article has some interesting details: http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Friends_Reunited<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I meant to blog about this a while ago but completely forgot about it, which is kind of like friends reunited to be honest Friends Reunited has been around for ages (July 2000, ages on the Internet!) and started with a simple idea. Put people in touch with lost friends This was mainly old school<\/p>\n

<\/span>Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff"],"yoast_head":"\nFriends Reunited - free - Andy's Techie Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2008\/05\/27\/friends-reunited-free\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Friends Reunited - free - Andy's Techie Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I meant to blog about this a while ago but completely forgot about it, which is kind of like friends reunited to be honest Friends Reunited has been around for ages (July 2000, ages on the Internet!) and started with a simple idea. 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