Is the net actually useful to find long-lost acquaintances?

Ancestry.com has filled the missing gaps in my wifes family history. this is a very informative site and worth the nominal fee to access your ancestory. its all at your fingertips.

I’ve just predictably used FaceBook and/or various white pages sites. I’ve known people who have used classmate sites to track down old friends.

You could start by googlng the name and it would be helpful if you knew what state the person lived in.

I found so many and so many have found me on facebook (basturds). It’s true, facebook.

Facebook and Classmates.com. Can find people. I found some people I went to in highschool on classmates.

Well, first order is to determine if you really want to find someone. lol

I have zero interest in finding anyone from my past! haha

@Frenchfry yes, of course.. but what about classmates from, say, elementary school ?!

I google people I have met obsessively. I have found some people from my past and then realized that I have absolutely no desire to get in touch with them. A few have contacted me via Facebook and it felt like they just wanted another user to add. I give them the benefit of the doubt at first, but I usually wind up either limiting their access to my profile or removing them from my friend’s list altogether.

There’s one kid I knew in primary school I have been trying to find for years now. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to find them. This saddens me.

@muppetish very much similar story mate.
Naa… I think one day you’re likely to find them.. more by pure chance than anything, really.
It’s happened to me… but of course it’s rare…. but I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.
(sometimes I forget who I’m looking for… heh..)

I’ve found old friends on Facebook and on Classmates.com. Classmates lets you put in your elementary schools as well. There are fewer people with the elementary school information listed, but it is an option.

@Deja_vu yeah, I know… it’s annoying at times…

@chyna hmm… really that simple? I’ll try and let you know. It’s true that the web has been evolving in these past years.
Earlier on, I didn’t manage to find much of anyone I was looking for…

@JilltheTooth Hmm… what are some of these sites, dear?

@john65pennington that’s remarkable, really… I do have some relatives around the world I’d like to get in touch with….I’ll try it out and see.. cheers!

@Seaofclouds hmmm.. thank sea..I hope, I hope…

@Anatelostaxus : I’ve never used the classmate sites, but I’ve found people on this and this. With both you need to do a little digging, and have some basic info,but I’ve had some success.

People have found me on Myspace and Facebook, neither of which I embraced at first but then later grew some appreciation for. Even more fun has been meeting friends of long lost friends and forming new relationships. One of my best friends now was met as a stranger through Myspace, me getting her profile and having several keywords in common and finding out we went to the same schools, ran in the same scenes, knew the same people but never remember having met in person until 20+ years later. Neat for me!

I have had amazing luck on Facebook and even on flickr, getting responses from people I haven’t heard from in decades. Not even sought-for, but welcome. And one bequeaths another. Friends of that friend whom I knew reappear.

As far as I know finding someone beyond basic Intellius [white pages] seeks cost money. There’s a lot of info out there but only on TV do folks know how to find it. Even harder if the person is female and has very likely changed her name. You can search things you had in common like high school or college alumni sites.

I used the net to find my mother. January 1, 2001 that happened. She had died five years earlier. I never met her. She left when I was a couple of months old.

I’ve found countless people for others. There’s no set way…you follow a lead as far as it will go. It’s time consuming and challenges your patience. But, it is the most (for lack of a better word) rewarding thing you can imagine.

Good luck to all with searches. Get outside yourself and look at the situation.

Very useful, there are a lot of sites like friends reuinited and ancestry but it goes even further than that. when i was about 19 years old, i met a guy who told me how he had been scamed by a con artist. the police never found the guy, and he lost 7 grand. it took me about all of 5 minutes to track the guy down on a site called infobell.com (the site is a little different and not as good now days, but stil useful)

Yes, and this is one of the reasons I would totally marry the internet if it were a person. I’ve found and reconnected with a whole bunch of high school people, for starters. Facebook is great like that.

I’m still searching for my friend Kim.. totally kicking myself for ever having lost touch because her name is so common (last name, too) that I simply cannot find her. I have found a couple of sites like MyLife.com where she had a profile at one time and I’m certain it’s her, but it’s been almost 10 years since she posted there, so I figure it’s not worth subscribing when her email address is likely to have changed.

There is a site, ZabaSearch, where you can search for people and also leave them messages. I left one for Kim there a couple of years ago, but no luck so far.

I was able to find a long lost relative just by entering the name in Google.