Working on Class reunion. Anyone know a great FREE people search site?

Answer 1

No, there isn't, aside from the on-line phone books and zabasearch.com. Both have flaws.

I helped organize my own class's 30th, 35th and 40th reunions. We started with addresses for 200 out of 600 people. Finding people - especially women who marry and change their name - is the hardest part of organizing a reunion.

We made sure the school office had the name, street address, phone number, e-mail address and URL for our class, just in case anyone called.

We have a class web site; it had banners top and bottom announcing the reunion date and place. We made sure the official school site linked to it.

We divided the lost people into lists; 10 of us took 40 names each.

You can sometimes find people via Google, using all four versions of their name and quotation marks:

"Abraham Lincoln"
"Lincoln, Abraham"
"Abe Lincoln"
"Lincoln, Abe"

If you do, and the name has an e-mail address, write:

"If you are the Abe Lincoln who attended Springfield High in 1988, read on. If not, I apologize for bothering you. . .

If you have enough helpers, you all can call everyone in the county with the same last name as the missing person, to see if they are related and know where the person went. Don't do that with John Smith or Don Jones.

If there is money left over from the last reunion, have someone join Classmates.com for the year and send e-mail to everyone who is listed. In my experience, 1/3 of the e-mails bounce and another 1/3 don't answer.

Sorry - there just isn't a magic wand for finding people. For the 40th we figured people who couldn't add 40 to 1996, then either find us on the web or call the school, were not worth our time, so we didn't even bother. (For the 35th, half the "Lost" people I tracked down said they hadn't bothered to keep in touch because they didn't want anything to do with the class, high school or adolescence in general.)

A little advice about the event itself:

The single most important thing you can do to insure a good time is talk to the DJ before hand. The people who never left town and see each other every week at PTA, soccer practice, poker night etc. are going to want to dance. The ones who did leave town and flew 1,500 miles to attend are going to want to talk, and they are not going to want to shout over the music.

The ideal solution, if you can afford it, is to hire two rooms. Unless you are from Beverly Hills High, you won't be able to do that. Having the music "on" for 30 minutes, then off for 30 would be a reasonable compromise. Promise the DJ the same amount of money as if he played all night. Impress upon him the desire of half the audience to talk. Reunions are not the same as dances or concerts. People (some people) want quiet time, to talk. Keep hammering that home to the DJ. If necessary, tattoo it on his forehead backwards and give him a mirror. Appoint a "Quiet time" monitor.

I hear "It was a nice reunion, but the DJ ruined it" a dozen times a year from friends and family.

Answer 2

If your classmates are relatively young, myspace.com is a good start.

Otherwise, best thing to do is call thier family members in your hometown. That's generally the best way to contact people.

Hope this helps

Answer 3

Don't you expect to be paid for your work? Then pay the internet search people for theirs.

Besides, it's up to them to find you, not for you to dig them up. Just publish a letter in the local newspaper community section with the names of the missing students, and let their families locate them.

.

Answer 4

I don't think there is a FREE one. If you find one, let us know.

Answer 5

zabasearch.com

excellent and free resource