On the same day that News Corp. warned that MySpace " will fail to hit its revenue target this year as advertisers struggle to judge the commercial value of making on-line friends," along comes a message from Friends Reunited (remember it?) into my inbox announcing that "Friends Reunited has changed! We’re now much more sociable and completely free".

When I took a quick peak at the site this morning the first thing I
noticed was an inbox mail. It was from 2003 – the last time I had
visited the site! It appears I’m not alone. Checking profiles of former
schoolfriends none of them had been updated since I last visited
Friends.

Can Friends Reunited really recapture the community it once had? Not with a moribund community. After all, there’s a lot more to social communication than just declaring yourself social.

- Matthew