Adrian, do you really need to join a social networking site in order to get in touch with friends (close or long lost ones) ? You can do that with email or cell phone easily and not necessary need a social networking site to hook you up with them. I can show you of how to use your email to make connections with your friends or perhaps show you how to put up a web page for you on yahoo with your personal detail so that Google finds your name and indexed it, where if your long lost friends Google your name, they will find your detail.

The domain .co.nz used to point to the UK site in the recent past

But… that’s all immaterial. My point still stands I think, as a user it’s been useful, but reconnecting ‘old’ friends is the purpose of the site, not being on the latest social web 2.0 bandwagon. It might use the phraseology and banter but in the end it’s not facebook [current school/work colleagues] but family tree [history revisited and rekindled]

there’s also the old world newspaper element of “i wonder if tracey turned out to be the trainwreck she was becoming at sixth form?” Friends’ lets you do that if the database has them and you in it.

Revenue stream? not sure where that’s coming from though, maybe the hordes of ads and skyscrapers…

Findakiwi Ltd and FriendsReunited Ltd (NZ companies) were both struck off the companies office register 4 years ago or so.

The fact that it’s so hard to get the information about ownership is indicative of where it is headed…

Also (and far far worse) is this – http://friendsreunited.typepad.com/friends_reunited/ – the Friends Reunited blog which had one entry in April and nothing since

It’s reunited a number of my ex-pat rellies with friends they had 40 years ago when they left, it’s connected me back to kids I taught in the UK and to neighbours and whatnot from previous lives

The cost was a barrier, but easily subverted: My bio reads “google me, the login, nickname or even my name will bring results], a friend had a profile picture with their email addy in it, and theres always the email at hotmail dot com route used by others.

It’s not a johnny come lately to social networking IMHO, but more a build out on the gencircles ‘find my relative/family tree’ connect things, find someone

AFAIK it’s also a kiwi built site that also uses some of the back end of trademe/findsomeone/circle of friends sites

Admittedly your point about too little too late might be true, though the news [last month] has seen a great deal more traffic from me and the circle of friends I’ve found there…