September 3, 2001

4:52 AM

Friends reunitedhelps people who went to school in UK catch up with school mates. Except most of them are in IT living in London!!
posted by kramer_101 (12 comments total)

First things first. I signed up for this a while back and the most important thing you should be asking yourself is DO I REALLY WANT THEM TO GET IN CONTACT WITH ME. I've had two e-mails so far. Both from people I could cheerfully live without, frankly... And now I feel compelled to reply.
posted by barbelith at 5:04 AM on September 3, 2001

I looked at the site, saw first girlfriend had already registered and sent her an e-mail (yep - IT, London, more money than me - IT, Bradford :))

I then put in my profile that I was recently released from prison and the subject of trials of a new electronic tagging system. It's kept people away so far. That or I was more unpopular than I thought. :)
posted by vbfg at 5:18 AM on September 3, 2001

So ignore them! What is the worst they could do. These people have to pay to get in contact with you and obviously feel it worth it.
posted by kramer_101 at 5:27 AM on September 3, 2001

Although there were no people from my year registered I did find a long lost aunt who I never thought I'd hear from again. Splendid.
posted by Saima at 8:53 AM on September 3, 2001

I should think there'd be plenty of money in offering the reverse. Send me a hundred bucks, I'll block any attempt from previous acquaintances who clearly have nothing whatsoever in common with your present self.
Ten bucks off if they've got some sort of new religious agenda.
Thirty if the religion involves John Travolta.
posted by dong_resin at 9:25 AM on September 3, 2001

I couldn't work out - is it possible to register and look without becoming visible?

(Yes, I'm a coward)
posted by andrew cooke at 1:46 PM on September 3, 2001

I don't think so. I took a gamble on it not being worth £x of anyone's money to get hold of my email address in order to assuage my curiosity.

(and anyway I'm easy enough to find via Google for free, and no one's bothered yet)
posted by Grangousier at 1:53 PM on September 3, 2001

There's a definite danger of looking like a bit of a 'billy no mates' if you sign up to this. Surely it is better to appear successful and popular in adulthood than admit to having few friends by trying to get the old ones back. :)
posted by crayfish at 2:40 PM on September 3, 2001

I signed up for this a while back, it's allowed to me to contact one or two people who i've tried to find for years.

These things have to snowball to work, there's many of them out there .. and most are rubbish and undersubscribed.

I wonder what their winning strategy was ? .. or was it just luck ?.
posted by mrben at 6:53 PM on September 3, 2001

I found out about it from a link on the front page on the BBC News site, which would certainly form a good part of a winning strategy.
It has become the UK's third fastest-growing site ever, behind Napster and the Big Brother website.

The site is very useful and I don't resent them charging for email access, but I do take issue with their honesty on this point:
"Why do FriendsReunited charge?
We are committed to making FriendsReunited one of the best sites on the Internet. Unfortunately a small minority would like to spoil the fun for the rest of us by creating rogue accounts and sending unsolicited email (spam) to our members, some of which could be abusive in nature. By allowing only full members to send contact emails, this practice is easily controlled and has ceased."

I have come across a few friends who have put their email address in their notes so that people who can't or won't pay can still get hold of them, but it is blanked when the notes are viewed. Only people with addresses at uncommon domains which are also disguised similar to anti-spam munging get away with it. The site must pick out email addresses the same way Outlook Express does, and also look for 'Yahoo' and 'Hotmail' etc, and block them from displaying.

That isn't protecting people from spam - they have quite deliberately chosen to reveal their address. If the site came clean and said they charge for both the above reason and because they have to make a living then I'd have no complaints.
posted by southisup at 12:36 AM on September 4, 2001

southisup: The reason they block people giving out their email address in their profile is because their business model is to create revinue by giving out people's addresses! If nobody had to cough up the fiver, FriendsReunited.com would go titsup.com in a short time. I didn't think there was any confusion about this on the site itself. (Not that I'm one of the ones who has actually ponied up...)

One of my sister's friends contacted me, but none of my friends have signed up yet.

And really, this is what school reunions are really about. (from NTK)
posted by salmacis at 1:21 AM on September 4, 2001

I know this is a dead thread, but Kramer has no email address listed and I wanted to thank him for the link. I've just got back in touch with an old friend through this site, and had 17 years' worth of news about several others. Well worth a fiver.
posted by ceiriog at 10:22 AM on September 4, 2001