Or: When a business’s driver awakes after being asleep at the wheel

It must be pretty harsh when you find out that you’re totally irrelevant, not least when this is down to being superseded by something about a billion times better. I guess that’s how it feels to be Friends Reunited, who last night sent me some exciting news—their words, not mine.

Now, spam usually puts me in a bad mood, so “this news had better be truly exciting,” I thought. Otherwise, I’d have to say something sarcastic about it on my blog, obviously. So, what was this news, which was, as you’ll recall, exciting? It was this: Friends Reunited is now free (and, apparently, “much more sociable”, although I don’t recall the organisation being particularly aloof before).

Now, if I were a big ol’ dumb-head, I’d be thinking that Friends Reunited was being wonderful, and enabling people to get in touch for free, rekindling old friendships (and, presumably, reigniting old feuds). The thing is, I, like pretty much everyone else I know, abandoned Friends Reunited long ago, leaping over to Facebook, which just happens to have been free from the start and, wisely, has stayed that way.

It’s sad to see a supposedly older, wiser company in the field somehow miss the boat so spectacularly, and Friends Reunited’s latest attempt to not only stop the ship from sinking, but also prevent it from bursting into flames on the way down, smacks of desperation. It’s like when Netscape finally twigged about two years too late that, in the face of massive competition from Internet Explorer, it might be a good idea to stop charging for Navigator, what with a superior and free equivalent being available.

Still, it’s good to see that the money made during Friends Reunited’s time as a paid-for site hasn’t gone to waste. The new Friends Reunited tour is narrated by Martin Clunes. This alone should, clearly, be enough to make the entire world ditch Facebook immediately.