MySpace and Facebook Positioned to Crush Classmates.com

Last April, I posed the question, "Will MySpace Kill Classmates.com?" on Technology Evangelist, and included the following comment:

"While Classmates has filled an interesting niche for years, it looks like MySpace's fast growing - and potentially larger already - network of users connected through interests, bands, friends of friends, and schools, could post a real threat to Classmates."

So, what has nine months shown? That Myspace (in blue) has continued to grow while Classmates (in red) has not:

Of course, MySpace's audience is using MySpace for much more than planning reunions, so the comparison isn't entirely fair. Or is it? As I see it, whoever builds the largest network of people associated by school and class will be best positioned to enable reunion organizing. While few, if any, people join MySpace today for reunion planning, the value of the network generated is obvious. A MySpace side effect is crushing Classmates.com's pure-play.

The middle line on the graph represents Facebook(in green), who is also building high-school and college class networks at an extraordinarily fast pace. Anecdotally, Facebook seems to be the preferred networking site for college students today, which would make it the preferred reunion organizing site 5 and 10 years from now.

It's not all that different from the rationale behind Ebay's purchase and integration of PayPal. Ebay managed to build the largest network of buyers and sellers on the Internet, making the addition of tools enabling transactions between those two groups an obvious complementary service.

Add to that the fact that, if you try to opt out of unsolicited e-mails from Classmates they tell you it takes 10 days and then they keep filling up your inbox with crap. What kind of crap? Stuff like: You have one new comment but you can't see it until you sign up for a free full membership and that you have to pay for. Duh! Besides bogus comments, check out their adverts. It's the usual sleazy stuff about single women in your area yearning for you. I have always thought classmates was a good idea; Yet it's so badly implemented it deserves to die the death of incompetents.

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