Comments on: Will Facebook Kill Classmates.com?

By: CB3

CB3 — Tue, 26 May 2009 13:12:34 +0000

I have found 95% more people from my past using Facebook – for free, than Classmates where I had to pay for the service.
Facebook is the obvious choice – why any one would pay to use Classmates is beyond me!

By: Dan

Dan — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 22:28:44 +0000

Classmates already runs too many ads to offset their costs.

If I where to pay for a service like this I would expect to see no advertisements at all. It’s filled with dating ads. I am looking for old classmates not a date!

By: Mark Evans

Mark Evans — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 16:28:48 +0000

Alan,
Like you, I’m one of Classmates’ 50 million registered users but never done much with it given I just don’t see the value of paying for a subscription.

That said, I do think people in the U.S. are more likely to pay because they have more interest in keeping touch with high school/university friends than we do in Canada. That may have to do with the fact, there are more big cities to live in the U.S. so people tend to scatter more than they do in Canada. Of course, this theory could be completely wrong.

By: Alan Sawyer

Alan Sawyer — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 15:55:09 +0000

Classmates.com doesn’t get it. As Mathew Ingram writes in today’s Globe and Mail (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070815.wgtingram16/BNStory/Technology/) opening content to a broader audience could provide even more revenue in the form of advertising. Mathew’s talking about online newspapers, but the same premise works for sites like Classmates.com. Classmates.com charges way too much for their cost-based services. By your stats, they’ve got 47.3 million non-paying users (and I’m one of them). I’d gladly spend more time at the site, and delve deeper into the content, if I didn’t have to pay to do so — and that would mean a lot more advertising impression opportunities and revenue for Classmates.com.

I believe Classmates.com could still have a future despite Facebook because it addresses a specific niche. While the origins of Facebook once lay in addressing that same niche, FB has now become a much more generalized and multi-purpose destination and in doing so is less effectively addressing that niche. Classmates.com still has an opportunity, but they need to wake up to the fact that subscription revenues based on excessive subscriber fees aren’t the answer — open and free access to ad-sponsored content is.