Facebook 'kills' SAReunited

2011-03-04 16:01

Duncan Alfreds

Cape Town - Facebook's dominance has resulted in the closure of an early social network in SA, according to the co-founder.

SAReunited has announced that it is closing down its database.

"Facebook, wonderful as it is, has left little room for smaller social networks to be profitable. Neither do we want to spend our time blasting members with advertising to fund the site, that was not what we set out to do. So we made a tough decision," co-founder Amanda Tsinonis told members.

Facebook has amassed a user base of over 500 million members and this leaves little space for smaller networks.

In China, where Facebook and Twitter are blocked, other sites like Qzone have stepped in to fill the void of social networking, although the internet in that country remains restricted by the "Great Firewall of China" which censors "unsuitable material".

In Brazil, Google owned Orkut is a popular social networking site with about 100 million members, and in the mobile arena in SA, MXit has grown exponentially.

SAReunited has been going in SA for nine years and has 800 000 members who have to download their content by midnight on Friday if they want to retain it.

"Thank you to all the loyal, early followers joining us on our journey, we truly enjoyed being the pioneers of the social networking pre-Facebook days, but it’s now time to turn to new projects," wrote Tsinonis.


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