Classmates.com Review

School carries special memories for many people and some have been known to contact former school mates whenever possible in order to reminisce about days gone by and share some personal moments relating to the past. For many, getting in touch is as simple as calling or e-mailing old friends that have been in one's contact list since graduation. But for others, reliving old times isn't so simple because there is no way to find former classmates. Thanks to the internet, this problem is slowly becoming a thing of the past and one web site designed exactly for this purpose is Classmates.com, a web service for keeping in touch with former high school and college chums.

Web Site Commentary:

Classmates.com helps members stay connected with various services. New members start out by identifying their schools and entering some personal facts about themselves to share with others. There are many questions that can be answered, but not all questions have to be answered. Members can pick and choose what they would like to share and what they would not.  

I joined Classmates.com many years ago and I still revisit the site about once every month. I generally use the site as a means to find out about former school mates and what they have done with their lives since high school. It is often very entertaining to read the profiles of people whom you knew in high school and find out what they have been doing (or not doing, in many cases) since they received their diploma. Most profiles don't reveal anything shocking and most people seem to be doing little out of the ordinary. Still, it is fun to read the profiles of some- especially those expected to be very successful- and discover exactly what they have accomplished since graduation.

One thing about Classmates.com that many find frustrating is the fact that you have to upgrade your membership if you want to partake in all of the services. This is true, to an extent, and the teaser e-mails that Classmates.com sends out do tend to get annoying after a while. The e-mail will tell you, for example, that other people have visited your profile but if you click the link to see who has visited, it will take you to another page where you are politely informed that you can take advantage of this service if you agree to relinquish your free membership and upgrade to a paid membership instead. I understand the point of this (to make money), but it still gets frustrating. However, not everything carries a cost at Classmates.com and, in fact, the site offers more information free of charge today than it did in the past. For example, basic members can now read a member's full profile- as well as see photos- all with the basic membership. There is no longer a need to upgrade to Gold membership to utilize these services.

Besides the pressure to upgrade to Gold membership, Classmates.com has a few other annoyances. One is the timeliness of the information. If I lookup, say, a survey for the members of my class, there is a good chance it was a survey posted many years ago. Classmates.com continues to show this old, outdated information and the only way it will disappear is if enough new surveys pop up to take its place. If your high school or college has a large number of active members, then there is a good chance this information will be more or less up to date. But if your school's members aren't very active or if your school was small, there is a good chance some of the information presented is many years old.

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