Reunion Site Eyes Phone Directory Business

Thursday 6 October 2004

Reunion Site Eyes Phone Directory Business As Numbers Swell to 400,000

New Zealand’s largest school reunion website www.oldfriends.co.nz has just passed 400,000 members and is considering breaking into the phone directory business.

Old Friends was established in 2002 to enable New Zealanders to reconnect with old school friends, work colleagues and sports mates. Since then its experienced exponential growth and this week passed the 400,000 member mark.

“The viral nature of this community has surprised us,” said general manager, Sam Morgan.

“New Zealanders really do love to get in touch with old mates and it looks like they also have a tendency to tell their friends about it because we’ve never done any advertising for the site but its still grown at over 1000 % a year and is among the country’s top 20 websites.”

Old Friends now has 400,005 registered users, complete with email addresses, cell-phone numbers and MS messenger contacts. The secure registration process means privacy is assured and members are spam protected. It’s also free.

“The latest trend we’ve observed is people using Old Friends like an online telephone number directory, which isn’t surprising given the ropey nature of many online phone directories. We’re now actively pursuing options in this area including joint venture opportunities.” Old Friends is owned by Trade Me, New Zealand’s largest web business. The latest Neilsen//NetRatings figures show Trade Me had 950,O00 unique NZ visitors in September. It has over 700,000 New Zealand members.

ENDS

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