Websites which used to be quite good but are now pants:Friends Reunited
"Married Sally, who I started going out with between finishing 'A' Levels and leaving school. Just celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary. Spent the last 16 years in the bathroom industry."
Yesterday's post about my schooldays inspired me to take another look at Friends Reunited. Like most of the rest of you I signed up five years ago, eager to find out what my classmates had been up to. And how fascinating it was to discover that the class stud had settled down and become an accountant, that the quiet silent lad now had an exotic tropical wife, and that the spotty geek had married a baby factory and was now the proud father of seven. Logging on helped to answer a few salient questions, settle a few scores and provide closure. And all this without the need to disclose anything about my life in the process, or to actually communicate with any of these former acquaintances at all. Brilliant idea for a website. Perfect.
"Now Chief Operating Officer, SiTC Property Enterprises Limited, having worked for 13 years in various City institutions. Living Leatherhead, Surrey, married with one daughter and one son. Anyone wanting to invest in property should drop me a line!"
But when I logged into Friends Reunited again yesterday (hang on, I know I wrote that password down somewhere) I discovered that the site was now pants. Which seemed odd, given that ITV had been willing to fork out £120m to acquire it last December. They must have thought they were buying a ready-made database of millions of inter-connected citizens, presumably hoping we'd all interact in our droves whilst at the same time being tempted by online ads for Coronation Street and Midsomer Murders. I suspect they've since discovered they were wrong. Friends Reunited may have been wild and swinging in its 2001/2 heyday but that's not the case today. Nobody's added their name to my yeargroup at my old school for months, for example. Satisfying curiosity about your classmates is something you really only need to do once. Nigel the investment banker with three kids isn't suddenly going to become Trisha the post-op transexual (and, even if he has, he's hardly going to bother telling his old school friends about it). Friends Reunited is a website whose time has been, and passed. These days the tumbleweed blowing across the site is tangible. And desperation has set in.
"Just had twins, Vicki and Alexander, so sleep deprivation rules, married to Karen with a 6 year old daughter, Leoni, one black Great Dane who's over 120lbs and growing, all living in Phoenix, Arizona, USA following 2½ years in Hong Kong"
Not content with just cataloguing schools, Friends Reunited has diversified into colleges, workplaces, streets, and even Army platoons. The surest sign of desperation must be the latest "Duke of Edinburgh Awards" category, presumably for those who'd like to rekindle nights spent on Dartmoor huddled up inside damp sleeping bags. Alas most of these offshoots remain desperately underpopulated, whereas the key selling point of the original site was that huge numbers of people you used to care about signed up. So FR's webmasters have resorted to ever more desperate measures to increase interaction on the site. All the interesting information has been buried several layers down. Try to discover whether a long-lost acquaintance has written any notes and a holding page now suggests you might like to enter some more information about yourself first. At every turn you're asked to consider upgrading, or contributing to a mothballed forum, or cajoling some offsite mate into signing up themselves. Album after album of school photos lies empty, and the occasional plaintive cry for a reunion goes unheard. Maybe they ought to diversify into Old People's Homes before rigor mortis sets in. This isn't the hoped for ITV2.0, it's pants. Shame.
"Michael hasn't added pictures yet. Why not contact him/her to find out what they look like now."
Websites which used to be quite good but are now pants: any more suggestions?
