See Me! (friendsreunited.co.uk)

Member Name: kingsraconteur

Product:	friendsreunited.co.uk
Date:	31/05/09 (26 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great for contacting old school friends, Stirs up old memories, Now totally free

Disadvantages: Been taken over by sites such as Facebook, personal abuse has been a problem

Now Hewitt, I know you asked for some extra time for your homework but I think 30 years is a bit excessive don't you?

I remember well the buzz which was generated when this site first came into prominence. It must have been around 2000 and goodness what a great concept. The idea is very simple. The site is a means of getting in touch with old school friends.

From my point of view it was fantastic to re-aquaint myself with old chums from Primary School and Secondary School (trust me, that was more than a damn few years ago now!) As the site evolved they added extra elements such as contacting people where you live and where you used to work.

Most of the people I contacted were happy to say how well life had treated them and on a couple of occassions I did actually meet up with said old friends. To be honest though, I found that whilst people did say hello they didn't say much else after that. I wonder if that is the norm as I guess my old mates have their own new set of friends and families to take care of.

There's also the facility to recount your old memories. Isn't it great when someone stirs up some long buried memory in the back of your mind? I've added a few anecdotes of my own on there.

Then there's your old teachers. Unfortunately I never had the honour of contacting any of my old tutors but seeing their names and what they used to get up to brought back a smile or two. I remember quite a bit of controversey a few years back when old pupils used to criticise their old instructors. I guess it's natural but there were a lot of hurtful comments flying around and my school's inmates were also pretty scathing.

I don't think that's so much of a problem now and the threat of litigation I'm sure has put paid to a lot of that nonsense. Still, I'm sure we all had old nicknames although I won't put any on here...(they're a bit too rude!)

Unfortunately for Friends Reunited the advent of Myspace, Facebook and Twitter has eroded their individuality. It forced them to waive their membership fee (a good thing) and to up their game. I have to be honest though, since Facebook, etc (Where you can set up groups for your school,etc) I seldom go onto Friends Reunited. At first, I was on there almost every day!

In my opinion this is still a useful site. However, the social networking sites which have come along since have diminished its standing hence the three stars rather than the five it would have got five or six years ago.

Summary: Useful tool for contacting people.