all talk and no action

I was never a huge fan of Friends Reunited as I’ve always been of the opinion that if there was an old school friend that I wanted to keep in touch with I either (a) kept in touch with them or (b) had a good reason not to. But as time has gone on, I’ve realised that there’s an option (c). That’s people I’d quite like to hear from but through various work, address, email and phone number changes I’d somehow lost touch with. It’s Facebook that’s reminded me of that – it’s nice to get the odd update from people I don’t often talk to, and to be able to exchange messages and keep some sort of a friendship going, however tenuous.

And that’s what’s caused me to dislike Friends Reunited even more. It makes it blindingly obvious that it’s about making money from membership fees rather than connecting people – you can’t add a Hotmail address or even mention the word Facebook in your profile. Those words are banned, and automatically deleted from your profile. So when I added “I’m on facebook if you want to get in touch”, Friends Reunited kindly changed it to “I’m on if you want to get in touch.”

It’s ridiculous and similar to a pub landlord banning customers from exchanging phone numbers, telling them that they can only talk to each other again if they come back to the pub and buy a drink. The customers, of course, will promise to return, and instead swap phone numbers in the car park before telling all their friends to avoid the place and go somewhere more welcoming. And similarly, Friends Reunited users resort to not-so-subtle ways to share their contact details. “Mail me at my name at the hot place” or, as I’ve now added, “I’m on the book of faces”.

It’s not hard to find a way around these stupid filtering systems and it can only annoy people who might pay for other services, or at least click a few banner ads. Maybe now I’ll get kicked off Friends Reunited for breaking their terms of service, or have my profile manually edited to remove the reference to Facebook, but you know what? That’s a pub I don’t want to drink in any more.

Stick it to the man. I was wondering just the other day if Facebook would join Hotmail on their "automatic deletion" list, seeing how Facebook makes FR look embarassingly dated and money-grasping. Still, at least FR is upfront about taking your cash, rather than selling your personal details to God knows who.

In other news WHAT THE HELL IS THIS SITE THEME OH GOD MY EYES.

You do know that Facebook is a front for the US Total Information Awareness agency? ;-)

You're both absolutely right, of course: FR is based on the old way of doing things - get your punters to create the content, lock 'em in and charge 'em to do anything. Expecting people to pay before they can contact anyone is very Web 1.0, heh.

Paul, you should pitch this as a story to tech guardian. It'd be perfect for them.

>Paul, you should pitch this as a story to tech guardian. It'd be perfect for them.

Yes, because more deadlines is just what I need right now! :)

Haha :)