Nostalgia. You know you love it. And when you start to hit middle age, sometimes, you crave it, and the need to look back can only grow as you age.
Some like to look back to see how far they?ve come. Others look back and think, ?What happened"? And still others wonder what happened to The One That Got Away. Whatever side you?re on, remembering the past is a fun adventure and Classmates has been helping people look back at their former selves for the last 20 years.
Abani Heller, Classmates’ CEO, talked with SocialTimes about how the site has grown with social media over the past two decades:
Twenty years marks a significant achievement and a time for nostalgia here at Classmates. By our definition social media is 20 years old, but for us, it feels a bit like coming out of adolescence. We?re a teenager, but not quite an adult. Dubbing itself ?the first social network,? Classmates started in Seattle in 1995 as a way for high school alumni to connect with one another. And, if you?re at least 35, you know it?s the probably first social network you signed up for, well, that or Friendster.
Thinking back to 1995, the Internet was quite new, not many people had connections in their homes, and, if they did, it ran through the phone line.
Heller explained two main trends his company has noticed in its 20-year-old life: fragmentation of the social media industry and social becoming less social. He elaborated:
You see many different flavors of social networking these days t...