The Social Network that Friends Forgot

Browsing Facebook the other night I saw a passing reference to one of the earliest social networking sites - Friends Reunited. I remember using that site a few years ago, before it was bought by ITV for £120m and wondered what had happened to it since?

It seems that FR has been having a tough time in the last year or so.

I read from recent news clippings that ITV is considering a name change for Friends Reunited as part of a strategic review in response to competition from rivals such as MySpace, Bebo and especially and Facebook.

As part of the overhaul, ITVis also planning to ditch Friends Reunited’s subscription charges in favour of an advertiser-funded model.

A few months ago, ITV claimed FR had about 1 million UK subscribers and 22 million registered users. According to comScore, in September 2007, Friends Reunited had 2.3 million unique users in the UK compared to 10 million for MySpace and 10.23 million for Facebook.

I revisited FR to take a look at my old profile (nothing changed for four years) and to see how the online product had changed.

In addition to the classic friend finder service, FR now offers Genes Reunited (find your long, lost family), Dating, Jobs and..er..online Bingo. Well maybe the bingo is a product extension too far, but you can see that ITV have tried hard to make their £120m investment work hard.

I guess my main issue is whether FR can really offer much more than the more powerful, busier and personalisable social networks like Facebook and MySpace.

If I was trying to find someone from my past, I’m pretty sure I would try Facebook first.

I’m not convinced either that FR’s strict group categories are that appropriate now. Social networks form in many ways, based around member interests, location etc.

So If I’m honest, i can understand why FR’s website traffic has been falling significantly in response to the Facebook onslaught.