Do you ever look at Friends Reunited anymore? I see ITV, the owner who bought it for a hugely over-inflated £175m in 2005, have admitted it's now worth considerably less. No surprise - by that time surely everyone in Britain had heard of it and anyone who wanted to be on it, was on it.
I look at it from time to time, but I can't think of a single person I know who's made their presence known for the first time in years. When I first discovered it in about 2001 I was obsessed with it. It was a revelation. All those old school friends I'd not seen for 20 years - there they were (some of them at least) at last. I got in touch with some, some got in touch with me, we met up (in some cases only once - that was enough, especially when they started referring to themselves in the third person and demanding my address so they could come and stay following their messy divorce), and the list stopped growing and the contacts dried up. Once we'd satisfied our curiosity about what each other was doing now, there was little point in carrying on. After all, you keep in touch with people you want to keep in touch with. Now, that site is dead in the water.
I couldn't believe ITV paid so much for it back then. They attempted to shoehorn references to it into every show, had it sponsor schooly/nostalgia drams that you couldn't help but wonder had been commissioned specifically for this purpose. Still this didn't bring in any new names. Defeat must now be admitted. Plus, the design's all horrible and it's hard to get onto most of the time.
RIP Friends Reunited.
7 comments:
I am assuming that none of the small children pictured are you, FC. Which is rather disappointing.
I do have a picture of my younger self online somewhere, let's see if I can find it...
Do show, Kitten. None of these are me, no.
Found it. No laughing at the back, now.
That's deeply cute, Kitten. Quite American looking. If I had to guess who it was I would have sat there all day and still not got it. Not to say you're not deeply cute now, but you know what I mean.
I've been to all my School reunions (3)- which seem to have dried up since Friends Reunited came online - but almost all events were the same - an evening of strangers in name badges (most of the people I wanted to see didn't go) and the set piece answer of 'divorced, with two kids' all night - I'd go again though -
But to answer your question I don't really bother with it anymore - I think Facebook, myspace and blogs have killed it off too - was a great point of contact at the time but has been superseded by other social networking sites...
I'm a bit surprised that you don't think the five-year-old me is recognizable. Admittedly, that's mainly because we had a "guess the baby" photo competition at work a few years ago (it was for Comic Relief or some such thing) and lots of people thought that picture was an easy point because it was so blindingly obvious who it was. Perhaps I spend more time pouting at work than I generally do in your presence, FC?
Nice bobbles, Kitten.
I meant the ones in your hair! I'll get me coat...
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