Friends Reunited Set To Relaunch

The UK’s early social networking pioneer Friends Reunited is to re-launched.

The service first began in 2000 with an aim to reunite old school friends and after an initial strong start the site was bought by ITV in 2005 for £175m, only to be sold four years for £25.6m to online publishing group Brightsolid.

The first online social networking service to take off in the UK, at its peak, Friends Reunited had over 15 million members.

However, as more technologically advanced offerings emerged, such as MySpace and then Facebook, the site struggled to hold on to its user base.

The re-launched service now invites users to sig up for its “memories”-based service, with social media experts telling the BBC the site's future prospects rely on it being able to offer "something new" to tempt users back to the site.

The site's owner, Brightsolid, believes a host of professional archive content coupled with users' own material will help make Friends Reunited the choice of social network for people keen to partake in online nostalgia.

"We wouldn't do this if we thought it was just another also-ran," Brightsolid chief executive Chris van der Kuyl told the BBC.

"It's about every blast from your past - every kind of great memory you have."

To attract people to the new site they have teamed up with the Press Association and the British Library to allow users to attach old material - including newspaper clippings - to their own "memory box".

These boxes can then be shared on other sites such a Facebook.

The service is currently free to use - although Mr Kuyl said revenue-generating options were being considered further down the line, including inviting brands to offer their own nostalgic material, such as old cars, to be added to users' memories.

(H)