The origins of this blog go back to joining Friends Reunited in 2004 which had a blogging or perhaps more accurately a journalling facility to which you could send links via email to but was designed for site members to help keep in touch with each other.
I looked at it, tried it but even Blogger circa 2006 was better but I just wasn't sure about this blogging thing and some of the stuff I wanted to talk about like last weeks post.
The site Friends Reunited launched in 2001 with a simple premise which was to enable people to get in touch with each other by holding information people freely submitted about the school, college, university and places of work they went to in groups.
You could search by name, year, place or establishment they had something to do with which soon made this UK site one of the biggest sites on the web.
I joined to keep track of some of my friends who were still alive (many sadly have life-shortening conditions) from the schools we attended using it to get back in touch and learn more about how our lives had moved.
It's success bought it to the attentions of various groups like ITV Plc who bought and in the eyes of many messed it up to fit its commercial interests introducing fees too and in 2010 it was returned to it's original owners.
The world has moved on since those heady days, with the growth of things like Facebook, Google Plus, Tumblr etc and so in that time its users fell.
It'll be closed shortly simply because it's really lost what would keep it a sustainable entity a lot of big users posting with the small number left using it to just post messages to each other.
R.I.P Friends Reunited.
No comments:
Post a Comment