Reunion.com, a social network for reconnecting with old friends and family, just grabbed a huge $25 million round of funding from Oak Investment Partners to join their original $1.4 million in angel financing (Richard Rosenblatt was one angel). The service is kind of like Classmates.com, but for branded as a way to reconnect with anyone you haven’t seen in a while.
Reunion makes it easy to register your data into the system through a registration process that just requires a full name, birth date, and email address. Once you register you can continue on to a free profile or get a premium account ($3.34/one month, $60/year). The free account gives you the standard social networking profile features (photos, blog, …), while the premium account throws in some extra snooping features. Premium accounts allow you to see who’s searching for you, viewed your profile, Send email to other members, get 5 public-records reports, and set up a class reunion.
One can wonder how a service like this could charge in the face of network behemoths Facebook, LinkedIn, and Myspace, but Reunion makes it easy to collect basic data that can be used to lure other users into the network, and searches through a lot of personal data points.
Their strategy seems to be around getting as many people as possible to add their basic info into the database and then luring other users into the network by telling them how many people might be searching for them (15 for Nick Gonzalez). It’s kind of like a huge internet Rolodex, the more people that buy in, the more useful it gets. They’ve also got an Outlook plugin and can search your email account for possible connections.
According to the company, the site has attracted 28 million users and is adding nearly one million new members each month. They draw almost 8 million unique visitors conducting 60 million searches for people monthly.
Wonder how they plan to crush facebook.
28M users yet only 8M users/mo? That merits a $25M investment.. wow! My company has this unbelievable piece of prime, waterfront real estate in Florida….. anyone…. anyone…. Oak Investment Partners?
7.5 searches per active user is a pretty decent amount of user activity.
Facebook has a lot of pageviews, but like most social networks the CPM is very low.
They are trying to take on classmates here which is a real cash cow.
Reunion bought Good Contacts which supposedly controls intellectual property that Plaxo would admire.
“…get a premium account ($3.34/one month, $60/year)” ?
So their yearly plan is more expensive?
I don’t think so. 
You might want to correct it.
If you opt for “3 Year” premium membership, they charge $3.34/month or $40/year.
For “1 Year” premium membership, they charge $5.00/month (no discount for yearly payment)
http://Startups.VC
What kind of staying power does something like this have once a few people show up? There are many social networking sites out there that compete for your attention. Almost too many. As a participant I would be looking for something useful or of value.
Wheres the hook?
- Almost to many? THERE ARE TOO MANY!
- with 25 mill one could stay around for 5-10 years / with 20-30 employees.
- RBowles
Hey I had quick question, we always here how much traffic facebook, friendster, myspace gets and their revenue numbers. Does anyone have any idea how much revenue these other social sites make wiht just 20,000 user to 500,000 users? I mean there are many social network sites out there now,, are they all really making money or just seeing if it will be a big hit?? thanks
What a great and relevant domain name!
What Reunion should not do:
Free membership in Batchmates doesn’t allow to see friends email ID. You should be a member to send and receive mails. Members can’t upload hi-res photos. Even for Members limited space - which is less than 10 MB. Batchmates feels that, by sharing the email ID with others makes the batchmates site of no use.
Customer Loyalty is bad. Even though I am premier member of Batchmates, I don’t use it.
http://www.suggestusability.com
Reunion.com - nice name, nice graphics, nice html emails, nice idea.
But, annoying website. Again: used it once, never went back b/c they blocked me from seeing anything useful. I understand the need to make money (and not just from advertising) but teasing me with who’s looking for me and then making me pay to find out who it was (what if it’s some stalker from your past or someone you REALLY don’t want to know about, or that you are active on the site and they did indeed *find* you) was irritating.
They should merge with Classmates.com
I signed up, played around a bit and never went back. Sure, I get the “10 people searched for you” emails from them all the time, but I find that the free sites like LinkedIn and even MySpace allow me to find the people I really want to interact with from my past anyway. Why the heck would I pay $4-5/month to get contacted from people from high school anyway?
They’d have a better valuation down the road if they just went free and had advertising or value add services for setting up reunions.
Unfortunately Reunion.com is blocked within the United Arab Emirates, whereas Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace are not. So something about the content on the site is “inconsistent with the religious, cultural, political and moral values” of the country. Perhaps is the snooping features.
So why would someone join this site where premium members can spy on non-premium members?
I suggested to Jeff a few weeks ago to add a function similar to MeetUp.com or Upcoming.org to allow users to “Reunite” and connect offline…charge a bit less for the other service of being able to see who just peeked at your profile. If he adds it don’t forget where you all heard it first!
Henri Duong
http://www.socialurl.com - “Get Yourself Together!”