Via PaidContent comes news that Classmates.com, an early player in the social networking space, plans a spinout from parent United Online Media and has filed for an IPO.
Classmates, described to me once as "proof that there are lots of married people who never got over their highschool sweetheart", had revenue of more than $139 million in 2006, though has yet to turn a profit. The new company, Classmates Media, will consist of Classmates.com and the MyPoints.com loyalty marketing division, and will trade on NASDAQ under the ticker CLAS. UNTD will retain a majority stake in the Company. Meanwhile, Steven McArthur, formerly president of North American operations for Expedia, has been named President of Classmates.com.
Going forward, Classmates, which has 2.7 million paid subscribers, will have difficulty competing against the larger free social networking applications like Facebook and MySpace. Then again, the market for tracking down your ex-girlfriend or boyfriend may be larger than I suspect.
I am having difficulty in surfing my profile, especially the photos and the sending of messages to other classmates. The messages I receive from others are obscured by a dark red film.
Posted by: Jack Chubb | January 15, 2008 at 01:10 PM