First are the ones that you’re fortunate enough to live near as the years go by. Those are easy because you have the same experiences and grow in the same way. The second are the ones you lose track of for a few years and then when you get back together you have a great time catching up for about 10 minutes and then realize you don’t have anything left to say.

The third kind are the ones that should be cherished. I’ve been fortunate enough to have been blessed with more of these than I probably deserve. They are the ones that you can lose track of for years and when you get back together pick up your conversations like they’d never ended. With these people it doesn’t matter that you’ve have different experiences in life or what your political or religious issues are, you can still have conversations. Thanks guys.

I’m all for people making money. I’m even all for people monetizing content on the web. Go for it, it’s not 1993 anymore and we should all come to terms with it. The flip side is that the web is almost infinitely more useful now than it was then but in my opinion everything doesn’t have to be monetized. How about if you Internet Marketer type leave a couple of places that are just for fun?

Francine Hardaway also discusses this on her blog in a good deal less hysterical, end-of-the-world fashion.

One competitor that should be shaking in their boots is Classmates.com Why? Glad you asked. If you’ve never been on classmates.com it’s a great concept but the business model sucks. You can’t really do anything except provide them with personal information unless you’re a paid member. There are some things like messaging that you can use if a message is sent by a paid member. I could be wrong on some of the details here because frankly I don’t ever log in anymore.

At any rate, Facebook could kill them off merely by setting up school memberships. In fact it’s sort of happening on an ad hoc basis already because individuals are setting up year specific groups  for high schools. Clock’s ticking Classmates.