FRIENDS REUNITED founder Steve Pankhurst today announced his iconic social network is finally set to close, to which we collectively replied – “Friends Reunited was still online?”
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| Friends Reunited is set to close after 15 years online, its founder has confirmed |
Iconic social network Friends Reunited is set to close, one of its original founders has announced.
Steve Pankhurst said the early social network, which was created to reunite people who went to the same school, university, workplace, sports club and more, is still used by "a handful of members” but it is "no longer used for the purpose it was built for".
Friends United first launched in July 2000. At its peak, some 23.8 million people were registered with the British social network.
Users had to pay an annual subscription fee of £7.50, although this was later dropped.
Broadcaster ITV bought the website from founders Jason Porter, and Steve and Julie Pankhurst for £175 million in 2005.
But the iconic social network failed to keep up with other services, like Facebook.
"It became clear that most of the actual users coming to the site were using it purely as a messageboard," Mr Pankhurst told the BBC.
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| The UK social network failed to keep-up with rival services, like Facebook |
"And I also realised that of the more than 10m users registered, a lot had done so over a decade ago and hence their contact details were out of date.
"But importantly – it hasn't covered its costs and like any business this can't continue indefinitely.
"Therefore, whilst it's sad, I believe it's time to move on and put Friends Reunited to bed."
The Friends Reunited founder now plans to launch a new service called Liife.
It lets users plot out key moments in their lives and share them with those who were there at the time – rather than thousands of Facebook friends.
Rival social network Path offers a similar proposition by letting users control the audience for each status, or photo they post.
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