Classmates.com

Sometime in late October I joined Classmates.com on a pure whim, hoping to find some lost friends. I set it up, accidentally clicking the 2 year option instead of the 1  year option. They charged me $60 vice $40, but they refunded me the money after I figured out the error. As far as the actual service goes, it's a great idea, but I think it's something that seems better on paper, but the reality of it is that in a couple of email exchanges you can sum up the past few years of your life and then the emails slowly dwindle. I contacted 8 people: 4 of them responded, 1 of them didn't, and the other 3 didn't get the email that I contacted them, most likely from not updating it to their current email or just not checking it. My advice is that unless you are going to try to contact at least 10 or more people, don't bother. The other problem with it is, out of the 8 people I contacted, only 2 of them emailed me more than once. Theoretically I contacted 8 people, but it was up to them to return the email. You see the problem here. Some people don't want to be bothered by people from High School. Others don't keep up with email. And the ones that you do contact and talk to, it's very easy to fall out of contact with since so much has changed, and it's hard to keep up with daily emails. I have a hard enough time keeping up with my family, let alone people I haven't talked to in years. Some other options they offer are military, workplace, and college databases, so you can keep up with that. It's great if you have a good number of people you haven't seen in years, but don't expect everyone to get back to you. Weigh out whether the chances of you getting in touch with a few people, exchanging a couple emails, then losing contact is worth $40 a year.