Classmates.com Goes Tripping Down Memory Lane

You have to hand it to Classmates.com. It has earned its varsity jacket by annoying and infuriating members and subscribers at a rate that kept it on the Rogues Honor Roll nearly every semester.

But all of that may soon be just a stroll down MemoryLane.com. For you see, Classmates.com is graduating and moving on, hoping to expand its web of sticky memories beyond the school years, branching out to cover all things nostalgic.

Or so it seems, anyway. Visitors to Classmates.com have lately been puzzled to see that the site now describes itself as part of MemoryLane.com, a nostalgic extravaganza never before seen outside the locked-down wards.

No longer confined to the four walls of Anytown USA High, MemoryLane.com promises not only thrilling updates of the lives of high school friends you've long forgotten but also a chance to revisit such stirring moments as Johnny Carson's monologues, old issues of The Saturday Evening Post, old Johnny Carson TV shows and videos of, uh, Johnny Carson. (You think someone in the legal department got a deal on the rights to Johnny Carson's archives?)

In other words, it's all the stuff you just threw out of your attic, so as not to burden your children with the task once you're gone – now digitized and yours for just a few dollars (or so) a month.

Is this what what marketing types call a rebranding? Or is it a brand extension? Or is it more like the time back in 11^th grade when Betty Jo Hanschmueller announced that she would henceforth be known as Andrea?

A little of each, perhaps.

A fresh start

It was always easy to understand why Betty Jo wanted to make a fresh start. And a quick visit to your favorite search engine may provide some insight into Classmates' facelift. A few samples:

• "5 Reasons I Hope Classmates Gets Sued Into Oblivion," PC World, Nov., 2008;

• "Classmates.com Agrees to $95 Million False Advertising Settlement," Mashable, March, 2010;

• "Classmates.com Settles Over Misleading Emails," ArsTechnica, March, 2010; and

• Our personal favorite, "Classmates.com Employees Don't Have Heart To Tell CEO About Facebook," The Onion, May, 2009.

Be honest now. If that was the stuff people had written in the inside cover of your yearbook, wouldn't you want to transfer to a new school and make a new start? But enough of idle speculation.

For the straight corporatespeak answer we need look no further than the recent earnings statement from United Online, proud parent of not only Classmates and its new sibling but also FTD, the once-dominant flowers-by-wire purveyor, and other perhaps less fragrant ventures.

“In February, we launched our new Memory Lane website, representing what we believe is the largest archive of nostalgic content on the Internet covering the 1940s through the 1990s, while still retaining key features of our historical Classmates.com business,” bubbled Mark R. Goldston, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of United Online.

It's evolving

“The new Memory Lane website is evolving and, we believe, will enhance our ability to create new revenue streams from e-commerce and pay-per-view transactions in addition to enhancing the revenues we derive from paid subscriptions and advertising. We continue to add yearbooks to the website and currently have approximately 90,000 yearbooks available online,” Goldston said.

OK, it's not the National Archives or even Amazon.com but it's an awful lot of yearbooks. And did we mention those old Johnny Carson shows?

Look a bit more closely at the United Online earnings statement and one sees that “content and media revenue” is down ever so slightly from $50.5 million in the first quarter of 2010 to $48.3 million for the same period this year, a 4% slide.

A 4% slide might have been OK back in Mr. Klingenfus' American History class but it does not cut it if you are a big and bustling conglomerate up there with the varsity players on the NASDAQ. No siree. It's time for a trip down Memory Lane.

And that's especially true given the rough sailing that FTD has encountered this year. The brave little virtual flowers unit did well to eke out a 1% gain over last year, thanks to those U.K. meanies moving Mother's Day this year. What? You thought Mother's Day was about mothers? It's about flowers and candy and quarterly earnings.

Memories, memories

If you're still feeling nostalgic, here's even more we've dredged up from our very own treasure trove of Classmates trivia:

• Other names Betty Jo … uh, Classmates has tried out in the past;

• The good old days, way back in 2004, when United Online brought Classmates into the family and introduced it to its big siblings, NetZero and Juno;

• The 2010 class action that accused Classmates of passing its members' confidential information around without permission;

• The 2008 class action filed on behalf of consumers who upgraded their membership to see who was looking for them only to discover that, gulp, no one was;

And who could forget the 1,958 classmates who have written to ConsumerAffairs.com over the past few years, all singing the old Classmates High fight song. It goes something like this (as sung most recently by Stephen of Lago Vista, Texas:

“I signed up for Classmates.com over a year ago, found it to be useless and cancelled my contract. Monday, I found that they had charged my credit card $39 as a renewal fee. When I wrote to customer service and complained, Nathan responded that I had agreed to the automatic renewal and that I was basically out of luck.”

Those were the days, my friends. United Online may spread its tentacles far and wide but as far as we can see, its core business will always be hearts and flowers. So, let's wipe a tear away and keep a stiff upper lip as the strains of Pomp and Circumstance fade and say, thanks for the memories, classmates.