As The UK’s Granddaddy of Social Networking Stalls, Will Anything Ever Challenge Facebook?

I say ‘social networking sites’ and you think of Facebook. They’re practically synonymous. Just as ‘Google’ has become accepted as a verb in our language, you can now ‘facebook’ your friends too. But what about the days before Facebook became a verb as well as a noun? Of course, there was Myspace, and Bebo (remember Bebo?), but even before that the UK’s granddaddy of social networking was flourishing.

Celebrating (or perhaps commiserating) its tenth anniversary this month is Friends Reunited. Launched in 2000 from the spare room of a London couple’s home the site really represented the UK’s first introduction into social networking online. Created three years before Myspace and four before Facebook was even conceived, it was something of a trendsetter. Ten years on it’s more like that embarrassing uncle at weddings who’s too old to dance like that.

In its first six months of life, Friends Reunited picked up 3000 subscribers. In its first year it picked up a whopping one million users. Then came the dawn of Myspace, free to use and more attractive to those people young enough not to need to be reunited with school friends, as well as to the many bands which still populate the site. In 2006 Facebook joined the party in the UK and fewer and fewer people were prepared to pay for Friends Reunited.

Once it was sold off to ITV, Friends Reunited was made free and became the subject of a multi-million pound national advertising campaign. Shortly after, its monthly unique users figure peaked at 4 million, before dwindling back to the 1.3 million of today.

To put this in perspective, Facebook enjoys 25 million UK users. When you look at figures like that, isn’t Friends Reunited just small fry? Does it have a future? You might argue that a social network site with a largely middle aged audience would be highly attractive to advertisers such as Saga holidays or life insurance firms. But most people would agree that Facebook is capturing the imagination of the middle aged market quite well. Indeed, 19% of US Facebook users are aged 45-65 and targeted advertising on the site means it is very attractive to advertisers.

The rise and rise of Facebook in the UK has shifted the focus of social media away from simply putting users back in touch with long lost friends: it’s still about that, but it’s also about keeping up with family and friends from the present not the past. Friends Reunited, by its very nature appealed only to an older audience, which meant the scope of the website was rather self-limiting.

7.4% of the world’s entire population uses Facebook. Members spend a combined 700 billion minutes on the site every single month. It’s more visited than Google in the US and more popular than the BBC site in the UK. It’s been more popular than Myspace since 2008.

Can anything ever challenge Facebook? Perhaps, but Friends Reunited’s slow decline is evidence that social networking sites don’t necessarily live forever. For the moment, Facebook seems comfortable on its throne, unchallenged by even previous kings of social networking like Myspace. Facebook appeals to such a vast audience and incorporates all the most popular features of other social networks without ever limiting its niche: varied user demographic, fan pages for music and TV, searchable school and university networks and community pages. And this is where its strength lies: whilst Friends Reunited was too focused on forming networks of friends from times gone by, Facebook allows us to keep up with existing friends as well as finding old ones. It’s more Friends United than Friends Reunited.