"Friends Reunited ‘can survive in a Facebook world’"

Friends Reunited, the original British social network, is relaunching itself with a focus on memories in a bid to differentiate itself in a space dominated by Facebook.

 

The social network, which was launched 12 years ago by husband and wife team Steve and Julie Pankhurst as a way of helping people reconnect with lost school chums, is now restyling itself as a digital destination for 'collecting and keeping memories'.

The new-look Friends Reunited goes live on March 27 and will allow people to store their favourite memories in personalised ‘digital keepsafes’.

At the height of its popularity in 2003, the former darling of the UK social networking scene had more than 20 million registered users. However, since the extraordinary rise of Facebook, which has more than 850 million members, 

Friends Reunited’s popularity has dwindled, now only attracting 1.5 million unique visitors per month.

Friends Reunited, bought by ITV in 2005 for £175m and sold to Brightsolid two years ago for just £25m, had been written off by one technology analyst as "just a footnote in the history of social networking" on its 10th anniversary in 2009.

However, Chris van der Kuyl, Brightsolid’s chief executive, thinks there is still space for Friends Reunited in the social networking era, 12 years on from its launch.

“The new Friends Reunited is unashamedly nostalgic. It’s a place where people can still find their own school pals – but also store their favourite memories and images all in one secure place. These memories range from personal recollections to the national events which we all remember fondly.

“We need to protect our precious and shared memories for longevity, which the new site enables you to do, or we’re at risk of becoming the lost generation.”

The team behind the relaunch have signed a deal with the Press Association and photographic archive company Francis Frith to let users access and store iconic nostalgic images on their profile pages and in their personal keepsake boxes.

From launch there will be more than 10 million publicly available memories - (including six million photos of such landmark events like women getting the vote and the Silver Jubilee in 1977) which people can add to their profiles.

The new site will also automatically create over 24.3 million “Family Boxes”, that’s one for each of the site’s existing members - despite the majority of those accounts no longer being active. Family boxes provide a dedicated place for families to share private memories within a small group and to begin discovering their personal history, with unique features like a mini family tree builder and surname definitions.

Additionally, Friends Reunited has created over 10,000 nostalgic collections for people to enjoy browsing, ranging from “I Can’t Believe We Wore It!” to “Maggie Thatcher’s Britain”.

Van der Kuyl defended the decision to keep the ‘Friends Reunited’ name – despite its demise – saying it is a “strong British brand which still meant a lot to lots of people”. He said he felt confident that the strong privacy settings would mean a lot of people would feel more comfortable storing parts of their heritage on Friends Reunited rather than other social networks.

Van der Kuyl has previously publicly criticised Facebook’s privacy tools for being too complicated. Talking to The Telegraph in 2010, when beginning the redesign of Friends Reunited, he said: “The next generation of social networks need to make their privacy settings simpler. Facebook’s privacy settings are too complicated and people are still not sure what is going into the public domain or not…Facebook started out as a classroom product and has added so much to its service that its privacy settings have become too complicated.”

He added: “It is not in Facebook’s or other social networks’ interest for people to be able to completely lock down their data as these businesses wouldn't be able to monetise their social graph…I am never going to feel sorry for Mark Zuckerberg [Facebook’s founder and chief executive] but he is now in the position with Facebook users where if he gives them more control over their data, he will lose out cash-wise as he wont be able to serve highly targeted adverts.”

Friends Reunited will also make its money from display advertising, but said that it would shy away from personalised adverts.

Users with existing Friends Reunited accounts will still be able to login using their original details and new members can choose whether to sign up using their Facebook account or register separately.