So ends ITV's tragic experiment in - a startling reminder of the power of fickle internet users and how quickly the industry can rear its ugly head. The website, now little more than a butt of many jokes was sold this morning to DC Thomson for £25 million.
Grade, properly swallowing his pride, put the website up for sale in February, and now has to swallow a £150m write down from the £120m price he paid in 2005 and subequent earn out payments, estimated at £55m.
Of course, it's by no means all ITV's fault. The unprecedented rise of free social media didn't exactly help and few predicted the Friends Reunited demographic would take to Facebook with such gusto.
Don't expect an hour-long ITV1 special titled 'Friends Reunited: Just what the hell happened?' to hit the airwaves anytime soon, but we here at Revolution thought it would be worth taking a closer look at the thrills and spills of the now emaciated Friends Reunited.
In the beginning there was Classmates.com, a successful US start-up that connected old school chums in the heady days of the internet, 1995 - light years before "social networking" had entered the lexicon of nearly every broadband penetrated household.
Seeing a channel-sized gap in the UK market, the Hertfordshire husband and wife team of Steve and Julie Pankhurst, hedged their bets on Friends Reunited in the summer of 2000, which sparked an inkling of interest from the web heads of the day, and boasted around 3,000 members at year end.
Cue the explosion. In 2001, users came by the boatload, exceeding the Pankhursts' wildest dreams, as 2.5 million curious former mates and acquaintances set up their own profile on the website, looking to reconnect with old friends in new and exciting ways.
Two years later, and to the website's credit - in a brilliantly innovative move - Friends Reunited launched Genes Reunited, which allowed users to trace their family history.
By this time, Friends Reunited had burst at its proverbial seams - 15 million users and growing, trouncing over international borders, merging with SchoolFriends.com from down-under - even piquing the interest of the newly annointed chairman of ITV, Michael Grade.
As part of Grade's controversial five-year restructuring plan, ITV purchased Friends Reunited at a staggering £175m. Cue the slow, painful decline. A couple of new kids on the block, the likes of Facebook and Bebo, began offering a similar service, their success hinging on one critical element: it was all for free.
The friends at Friends Reunited began to complain about the websites ad-heavy, blocky design. Around every corner, a confusing system of payment barriers and access blockades.
By 2008, users were fleeing the website like the plague and a true mass exodus followed. ITV dropped its subscription fee to shore up the near 50 per cent losses in unique visits it had suffered the year before.
UK traffic to Facebook exploded, up 2300 per cent in 2007 - even Bebo welcomed a 170 per cent increase in users, while Friends Reunited wallowed, prematurely showing its age with a growth rate of 1.2 per cent.
Skip ahead to the present, and the story is much, much worse. According to recent comScore data the number of unique users on Friends Reunited has fallen from 5m three years ago to 1.7m in December 2008.
The broadcaster put the website up for sale in February with its own price tag at £60m and analysts' predictions at £40m.
Now with Grade stepping down from his role as chairman by 2010, Friends Reunited has been snapped up for a dismal fraction of the price he paid five years previous.
DC Thomson, the new owner, will have a battle on its hands to achieve anything like the success of the heady days of Friends Reunited. Realistically, profits are most likely to come from the genealogy business that fits well with DC Thomson's properties. It is now difficult to argue against the opinion that Friends Reunited has had its day.
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