There was a time when the social networking website Friends Reunited had the UK social networking scene all to itself. If you wanted to catch up with old school friends, or more likely to show off about how well you were doing, you had to use the once valuable site in order to do it.
You even had to pay (yes, pay… cold hard cash) for the privilege of contacting old school friends.
Then came Facebook, and Friends Reunited itself became an old school friend; one that nobody was bothered about contacting anymore. It’s once impressive membership migrated like rats from a sinking ship to the new, shiny, easy to use and FREE Facebook; a website that offered so much more than Friends Reunited, with none of the nasty demands for money.
This caused Friends Reunited to drop in value from the £175 million that ITV paid for it, to the £25 million that they sold it for – and that was over the odds.
But now it’s back. It has new TV adverts, a new layout and finally, after all these years, a proper logo! Indeed, one of the worst things about Friends Reunited was the amateur logo that its owners insisted on using, featuring photos that looked like they’d been sourced from Google Images and thrown together by someone with only a passing understanding of Photoshop.
The new logo is all shiny and professional looking, as you can see here – but alas it’s all a bit ‘too little, too late’. Even the email sent by Friends Reunited this week, to attract its old users back, lacks any kind of pull:
Some exciting news: Friends Reunited has changed! Were now much more sociable and completely free. There are lots of great new features to help you stay in touch with your current friends and were still the best place to find the mates youve lost touch with. To find out more, take a look at your brand new homepage:
Want some help? We’ve created a video tour to help you get the most out of Friends Reunited
Is your profile up to date? Change your profile here:
The Team at Friends Reunited
Logging in to Friends Reunited now you can see they’ve tried to ape Facebook, but several years too late. Why would I want to add ‘Brock’ to my ‘Friends Reunited friends’ list, when he’s on my Facebook friends list?
£25 million, a new logo and a typo filled email doesn’t really send the right message. It’s important in Internet marketing that you don’t rest on your laurels as Friends Reunited did, and stay one step ahead of the competition – or you too could see £150 million wiped off your company valuation.
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So Friends Reunited is to close? If only I’d predicted it would fail a few years ago https://t.co/eponaIc3q7
ITV bought Friends Reunited for £175 million, sold it for £25 million and now it’s worth nothing https://t.co/eponaIc3q7