Revamped website that will need all the friends it can find

The news that Friends Reunited is making a comeback has intrigued and puzzled people in equal measure.

There are others, of course, who couldn’t give two hoots. For them, social networking sites are little more than online babble, gossip on a global scale. But whether you use them or not, there’s no denying the fact that the likes of Facebook and Twitter are big business and the reason the relaunch of Friends Reunited has got people talking is because it was there at the beginning of the social networking revolution.

The UK-based network was launched back in 2000 to great fanfare. Critics questioned why people would want to be re-acquainted with someone who sat three rows back from them in their class at primary school 30 years ago, but at its peak it had more than 15 million members who used the site to reconnect with old school friends.

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The original site was bought by ITV for a whopping £175m in 2005, only to be sold for £25m four years later to online publisher Brightsolid. Despite its initial success as the first social network site to take off in the UK, it struggled as the likes of MySpace and Facebook emerged with users all over the world.

But the owners of Friends Reunited are hoping to tempt people by attracting those who are keen to get involved with online nostalgia. The site, currently free to use, has teamed up with the Press Association and the British Library to allow users to attach old material – including newspaper clippings – to their own “memory box”. They will be invited to share personal and national memories to a community of people, rather than within friends’ networks. The Friends Reunited team believe they have identified a gap, highlighted by the recent emergence and success of image sharing site Pinterest.

But not everyone is convinced. Sean Dodson, a lecturer in journalism at Leeds Metropolitan University, is sceptical about the impact it will have and believes it will struggle to re-establish itself as a brand.

“Friends Reunited pioneered social networking in the UK but it might struggle to compete a decade on from its original launch. When it first arrived on the scene, Friends Reunited enjoyed a great deal of success because it offered something new – the ability to connect with old friends over the internet. Now, thanks to Facebook and Twitter, such connections are now commonplace and the new site will have to come up with something original if it is to compete with the social media giants,” he says.

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Dodson, who wrote an article on the early impact of Friends Reunited in 2001, believes the original site proved to be something of a fad. “Now practically everyone who was on Friends Reunited is on Facebook. What can the old site offer that Facebook can’t?”

Nostalgia, perhaps. “It might appeal to an older generation who might feel more comfortable with Friends Reunited than they do with Facebook and it seems like they are trying to corner the nostalgia market and differentiate themselves from other social networking sites, but they’re unlikely to be as big as they were and they will never be as big as Facebook.”

One of the reasons for this is that sites like MySpace and Facebook have a global audience whereas Friends Reunited doesn’t, which Dodson says makes a big difference.

“Social networking sites have transformed our world, they don’t recognise national boundaries and to be successful in the 21st-century you need to have a global audience and Friends Reunited can’t get that,” he says.

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“When I left school in the 80s I didn’t expect that I would see many of my classmates again but the advent of social networking, and its success, means people can stay in touch with people who in the past they might have lost contact with.

“All the students I teach are on Facebook and most of them are on Twitter and when they leave university they will probably stay in touch with each other for the rest of their lives.”

In the space of a decade social networking sites have altered the way we behave, but Dodson believes not necessarily for the better. “They subtly change the relationship between people. Our behaviour changes when we know we’re being watched and as more of our lives are being watched it’s likely to lead to more standardised behaviour, and my fear is people will become more narcissistic and more interested in themselves.

“For people of my generation it’s a choice whether or not we embrace social networking sites, but for the younger generation it’s a default setting.”

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