I can't remember who I was talking to about this the other day but we decided that the people at classmates.com are probably really P.O.'ed about this whole facebook thing. If you've never seen classmates.com, it's a place where you can register yourself and all the schools you went to and when, and it can hook you up with classmates from those schools. It allows you to set up a profile, list your likes and dislikes and such, send and receive messages, all that kind of stuff. Very similar to facebook, but the difference is that classmates.com is not free. You can sign up for free, and people can see your entry, but if they want to actually contact you or read anything you've entered, they have to be a paid member. Similarly, if they send you a message, you have to be a paid member to read it.
I signed up with clasmates.com a bunch of years ago, just in case those people that teased me in high school were dying to look me up and apologize. I signed up with a free account, since it was not something that was important enough to me to warrant paying for. But everywhere you look, there are upgrade messages, and a bunch of things that you can't do unless you upgrade. I just checked now, and two people have apparently viewed my profile and signed my guestbook, but it won't let me see their names unless I upgrade for $39/year. Bite me.
Then along comes facebook.com, and does roughly the same thing but better and free. Now facebook is one of the most popular sites anywhere, while classmates.com continues to ask me for money. See that boat floating away from you, classmates.com? That's facebook.com riding on a ship called "Opportunity". Looks like you missed it.
2 comments:
Agreed, classmates had a golden opportunity 10 years ago when it came on to the scene. But due to their own greed, it struggled to take hold. Then comes myspace and facebook, and boom - they're instant hits, in come those advertising dollars and everyone is signing on to their sites making the people that started it gajillionaires. Meanwhile the classmates guys not even in the same league... but they could have been... so sad :(
I would have to agree also about Classmate missing the opportunity of making their network great! Since the recent investment of Microsoft $240 million dollars for 1.6% of Facebook. They value Facebook at $15 Billion dollars and Myspace at $64 Billion.
They to a networks success is the amount of active users it can support. Who does not like Free stuff??? A perfect example of Free service is GOOGLE Mail.
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