Friends Reunited is a portfolio of social networking websites based upon the themes of reunion with research (separate site Genes Reunited), dating and job-hunting. The first and eponymous website was created by a husband and wife team in the classic back bedroom internet start-up; it was the first online social network to achieve prominence in Britain, and it weathered the dotcom bust to survive into the age of Facebook Fact: date=June 2008.

Each site works on the principle of user-generated content through which registered users are able to post information about themselves which may be searched through by other users. A double-blind email system allows contact between users. Formerly, this required a subscription; this requirement has since been dropped.

The main Friends Reunited site aims to reunite people who have in common a school, university, address, workplace, sports club or armed service; the sister site Genes Reunited enables members to pool their family trees and identify common ancestors; the Dating and Jobs sister sites link members with similar attributes, interests and/or locations.

Friends Reunited branding has been attached to CD collections of nostalgic popular music, and television programmes broadcast on the ITV network, which owns the site. A book of members' stories was published in 2003 by Virgin Books.

History

The website was conceived by Wayne Hatchett of Acton, London in 1999. His curiosity about the current status of old school friends inspired him to develop the website, exploiting a gap in the UK market following the success of US website Classmates.com. Friends Reunited was officially launched in July 2000. By the end of the year, it had 3,000 members, and a year later this had increased to 2.5 million. Ex-Financial Times executive Michael Murphy was brought into Friends Reunited as the new Chief Executive in 2005 and the similar web site SchoolFriends Australia & New Zealand was rebranded and merged with the UK siteFact: date=February 2007. By December 2005, Friends Reunited had over fifteen million members and was bought by British TV company ITV plc for £120 million ($208 million) .

Friends Reunited has become popular enough that its uses have gone beyond the intentions of its founders. According to the Register, potential employers use entries to screen job applicants. Friends Reunited has been used by bitter partners to exact revenge on those who have abandoned them and users have been sued for comments made on Friends Reunited about other people. Friends Reunited features prominently in Ben Elton's detective novel Past Mortem (2004). The website launched a series of television advertisements for the first time in early 2007.

Friends Reunited and owners ITV stand accused of being left behind by competitors in the UK, primarily Facebook and Bebo (see others in list of social networking sites), with growth of only 1.2% year-on-year in 2007. By comparison, Facebook's UK traffic increased by 2393% and Bebo's by 173%. The site has been described as 'bogged down by an oppressive design, ad-heavy services and payment barriers at every turn'. However, ITV Chairman Michael Grade has described the site as 'the sweet spot' of the internet and stated that 'Friends Reunited is one of the great undersung jewels in the crown ... one of the most important bits of ITV going forward, a massive presence, and profitable' In March 2008, the site dropped the subscription fee required to contact members in a bid to regain losses of 47% of unique users and market share from more dominant social networking sites. The site made a profit of £22 million in 2007 - though its market valuation has fallen sharply from the £120 million paid by ITV in 2005, while those of competitors have increased dramatically. Visitor traffic has declined sharply since September 2007 and the site is now dwarfed by competitor sites in the UK market.