Beat this. One website claims to have 24 million "friends". And it's still open to approaches from new acquaintances.
Classmates.com lists 130,000 schools in the US, allowing past students to register and catch up on the lives of their ex-classmates. One American said he logged on out of curiosity, and found out about a forthcoming reunion for his class, which graduated 20 years ago. He also made contact, by e-mail, with a number of former friends.
It' a free service, full of lofty rhetoric ("Leap through a portal to the best of your past. Rediscover the people, places and pop culture of your youth. Reconnect with the past and find friendship for the future") and advertising for diverse products, from "picture personals" to holiday gifts, weight loss, air tickets and internet service provider AOL. But you can choose to ignore the tempting special offers, such as shares for $3, and simply use the site.
The lengthy privacy statement advises that classmates.com does not sell or rent personal identifications to third parties but it does provide personal ads to "selected, affiliated companies to allow them to perform services for members on our behalf". A fine line? Users usually receive some mail or an offer once a fortnight, which is not too intrusive.
The site claims to be registering 80 to 100,000 new members each day. In addition to its main service, it has a military directory. It claims this is the largest non-governmental online directory of military personnel.
Classmates.com is ranked by Nielsen Net Ratings in the top 50 most highly trafficked sites on the internet. A rival website www.highschoolalumni.com offers much the same service, linking alumni from schools in the US, US territories and armed forces schools. Registration is free and it claims to have more than 3.5 million registered users. Information on alumni is located with their graduating class.
There are listings for more than 33,000 schools which "makes the highschoolalumni.com database the biggest on the web". Go figure.
The advertising sidebars offer choices such as Find people, Find love, Find services, Find gear. The Find people link takes you to another website People-finders which offers access to more than 2 billion searchable public records. The Find love is, as might be expected, a dating service offered by highschoolalumni.com while I resisted the temptation to look at the politically incorrect chickclick link.
So much for Americans linking up with old classmates or finding love on the net. What about those of us who went to school in the Emerald Isle? A frustrating search through various websites didn't throw up any equivalent websites. One website www.edunet.ie/pastp/ offers the facility for various schools to register their past pupils' unions but, to date, only two schools (St Joseph's CBS, Drogheda, and Blackrock College, Dublin) are listed.
The Government sponsored site scoilnet.ie includes a schools link. This allows users to search for a school by county, school type and school name or by roll number. The correct school title is required. The listing includes the roll number, the principal's name, school address, phone number, website and e-mail. But, the latter categories are blank in many instances. In any case, a generic search of the web, using a search engine such as Yahoo or Google, would be an easier way of finding whether your alma mater has a web presence.
There are at least two international websites that include listings for Irish schools. Alumni.net claims to have more than 2.1 million members, with listings for schools around the globe, from central America to Africa, the middle East, to north America, Europe and Asia. While Ireland, north and south, is included, data is a little thin. For instance, there are no participating schools in County Meath. Dublin is split into a number of sub-divisions but again, there are few schools listed.
It includes a link to find What.com (wwww.1800ussearch.com), which will help locate family, friends and classmates, from $9.95.
A UK-based site seems to have attracted more Irish listings - www.friendsreunited.co.uk includes more than 28,000 UK (and Irish) schools and colleges. A lively site, it includes a school memory of the day and teacher of the day slot. When EL logged on, the teacher was addressed simply as "pinhead" but will undoubtedly recognise himself from the description of the two-day 30-mile school walk when he responded so unsympathetically to the author's complaints of aching feet.
The school memory of the day concerns Mr Eltringham: "Tall, slim, bespectacled, and possessed of an Adam's apple that was a true instant barometer of his mental state under duress."
Unfortunately, if you're feeling nostalgic for the best days of your life, or you are simply consumed with curiosity about your past classmates' lives today, you may not be able to find the information you want on the web. It might be simpler to pick up the phone, ring the school, and get a contact number for the past pupils' union.
