20 July 2009

Friends Reunited - Hoping to Gain Success from other Social Media Sites?


Friends Reunited. I bet that's a name you haven't heard in a while? One of social media's four fathers some may say. The UK's answer to the US's classmates.com.

Friends Reunited (FR) is a site that used to be the place to go for voyeurism on the net; to check out what old friends, colleagues and classmates were up to (and how many teenage pregnancies occurred post secondary school graduation!). But since then the big players such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter have stolen the limelight that FR once basked in.

According to Wikipedia, back in 2001, only a year after FR was established, it already had 2.5 million members. And with a great PR campaign boosting the site's success all the more, soon the founders were raking in the profits. At the height of its success the site had 15 million users and was up for grabs from the highest bidder. Eventually the site was sold to the ITV television channel in 2005 for £120 million. However, since then there's been a steady decline in its success. So what have people behind FR done? Well to coin a phrase, it looks like they've taken the attitude, "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em", and haven't they done just that!


Take a look at the image above. Is it just me, or are there a few elements borrowed from other successful social media sites? I can count 7 straight off. Why not see how many you can spot!

Lou_geek

p.s. Check out their huge footer, aptly named in the code as 'SEOFooterListHeader' - no sh*t Sherlock!