{"id":110057,"date":"2016-01-26T10:26:37","date_gmt":"2016-01-26T08:26:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=110057"},"modified":"2016-01-26T12:31:33","modified_gmt":"2016-01-26T10:31:33","slug":"friendsreunited-closes-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/trending\/110057\/friendsreunited-closes-down\/","title":{"rendered":"FriendsReunited closes down"},"content":{"rendered":"

Social networking site FriendsReunited<\/a>, used as a tool for people to find their old friends from their school days, has closed its doors after 15 years.<\/p>\n

The site was launched in 2000, by British husband and wife Steve and Julie Pankhurst, along with friend, Jason Porter.<\/p>\n

The site grew to be one of the largest in the UK, and in 2005, the founders sold the website to ITV for \u00a3175 million.<\/p>\n

“In 2005 we sold the site and moved on. We watched from a distance whilst other sites came and went but for some, social networking became ingrained in our life and is here to stay,” said Steve Pankhurst.<\/p>\n

“During that time FriendsReunited declined. Despite efforts to reverse this trend it couldn\u2018t compete with the giant services like Facebook.”<\/p>\n

In 2009, the social media site was sold on to Scotland based publishers DC Thomson, for \u00a325 million.<\/p>\n

DC Thomson recruited Pankhurst ‘to see if I wanted to take it back and try some new projects with it’.<\/p>\n

\"friends-reunited_1781120b\"<\/a><\/p>\n

“It was evident that putting the site back to be more like its original form was not a service people would get excited about using again. The site is still used by a handful of members however it has become clear that the site is no longer really used for the purpose it was built for. For the site to continue it needs a complete re-write and this is just not viable,” he said.<\/p>\n

A decision was therefore taken to close the service down, which will commence in the next month.<\/p>\n

FriendsReunited said that it will provide a link to allow members to login and download their photos. “You will be receiving an email in the coming months with further information on this.”<\/p>\n

Pankhurst said that while FriendsReunited is closing, he has decided to launch a new service called Liife – ‘Turning moments into memories’.<\/p>\n

Liife claims to be ‘a new way for you to tell the story of your life through the important moments you experienced and the friends you shared them with’.<\/p>\n

More on social media<\/h3>\n

How people use Twitter in South Africa<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Mxit took too long to react: Jordaan<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Mxit is shutting down<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Social networking site FriendsReunited, used as a tool for people to find their old friends from their school days, has closed its doors after 15 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":28513,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[25,11047],"class_list":["post-110057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-active","tag-friendsreunited"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110057"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110057\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110067,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110057\/revisions\/110067"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}