25 years ago, tweeting was something only birds did, an influencer was not yet a job title, and Facebook could be mistaken for something that might happen if you fell asleep while reading.

Social media was very much in its infancy, but one groundbreaking website called Friends Reunited provided an early premonition of the power it would soon hold in our lives.

Founded by spouses Steve and Julie Pankhurst and their friend Jason Porter in June 2000, Friends Reunited users could set up a profile by inputting their school and years of attendance to find anyone who overlapped. The UK-based platform truly appealed to our innate curiosity of ‘I wonder what happened to them?’

At its peak, Friends Reunited had three million users and, in 2005, the three founders sold it to ITV for £175million. S

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