Classmates.com Sued After Guy Realizes His Classmates Weren't Really Looking For Him

from the that-would-be-called-false-advertising dept

You may recall that Classmates.com was a website that first showed up in the 90s, and tried to do what Friendster and Facebook were later able to do. The problem was that Classmates.com's business model was to charge users for many of its features, including actually connecting with and contacting your classmates -- things that more recent social networks have always allowed for free. However, if you ever used Classmates.com for anything, you've probably been spammed with emails for years, each one claiming that your classmates are looking for you, or had recently viewed your profile. Nearly every email sent by the company (and they seem to come about once a week) has some enticing subject line that tries to suggest that something is happening with your profile and you're missing out if you don't upgrade to a premium account.

I've always ignored these emails, figuring that if any of my former high school classmates really wants to contact me, there are plenty of ways to do so that don't require me to pay up -- and naturally assumed that Classmates.com was exaggerating what was happening on the site. Some folks, however, believed the emails and upgraded. And, now, one of those who upgraded his account to see which classmates were trying to contact him, discovered (surprise, surprise) that Classmates.com was lying to him. His classmates weren't trying to contact him via the site, and so he's now suing the company for deceptive advertising, and demanding that the company refund subscription fees for everyone who was similarly duped.

Filed Under: class action, truth in advertising
Companies: classmates.com

Market Still Not Totally Crazy: Classmates.com IPO Shuttered

from the a-little-sanity dept

In all the talk about a "new" internet bubble, the one thing that many people have pointed out over and over again is that we're still not seeing the same sort of crazy IPOs that were everywhere in 1998 and 1999. However, that's not to say some weren't interested in trying to push the envelope. More internet firms -- including quite a few that were unprofitable -- have been looking to go public lately. However, perhaps the most outlandish was Classmates.com's IPO plans. Classmates, of course, was a survivor from the original bubble, and had something of a web 1.0 social network, helping classmates reconnect. It tried to make money on premium services that very few people signed up for -- and even fewer as things like Friendster, MySpace and Facebook came along. However, with social networking sites getting astounding valuations, United Online (the current owner of Classmates) decided to try to polish the company up and position it as a social networking IPO. Of course, it didn't take Sherlock Holmes to realize this was a dud from the very beginning -- and it seems that message finally got back to the folks at United Online who have pulled the offering costing the company $4.5 to $5.5 million for a lot of nothing. Still, this should be seen as a positive development. Even with the hype and crazy valuations around social networking, the folks on Wall Street have at least some sense of when a company just has a story rather than anything of substance.

Filed Under: ipos, social networks
Companies: classmates.com, united online