Classmates.com was a social network before the term existed. The Web-based service to connect fellow graduates and alumni of schools, colleges and businesses began in 1995, and today they are owned by the group that owns NetZero among other companies. It has comparative features to other services like LinkedIn and Facebook, but has a much different business model.

I am considering deleting my profile from Classmates.com and thus I have written this post – do you pay for Classmates com? In order for you to interact with anyone on the site, you have to pay. It is free to setup and edit your profile, but if someone sends you a message, you can’t see it unless you are a paying customer.

Here’s an example. I get regular emails from them, and here’s a segment of the latest one:

Someone signed my guestbook – cool. So who did? When I click the link to get to the Web site, here’s a segment of the Web page I get:

In order for me to see who has signed my guestbook, I have to pay. Of course I have no idea who signed it, if they are someone I know or if it is spam or a legitimate message.

Classmates.com has lowered their annual cost to $9.95 from $39. But between LinkedIn, et. al. and a Web site I helped create for my high school class, is this really worth it? Isn’t my profile in Classmates.com worth more to them? For if I and others leave, wouldn’t the site becomes less valuable?

With the proliferation of social networking sites, how many can you really be active on? I am not on Facebook or others daily, and on LinkedIn I usually check the home page for updates every few days. Is Classmates.com worth the cost to you?

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Welcome back from the Thanksgiving weekend, and hopefully it was a long weekend with some time to recharge your batteries!

On Sunday I worked off a little of the extra stuffing I ate at the gym, and worked to tidy up my email and desk, not to mention catch up on my blog feeds. One of the posts I read was from networking guru Jason Jacobsohn, reiterating his belief in writing personal note cards, especially around the holidays. This is a belief I share with him 1,000%, as when I had my letterhead and envelopes printed for Dunkirk Systems I also had note cards made.

Then I remembered – I hadn’t sent note cards to everyone I met at Tech Cocktail! So I took out a little time in the afternoon and wrote out about a dozen cards, as the accompanying photo shows. I ran out of stamps and will have to pick up some at The UPS Store. It felt good completing this task, and it felt even better reaching out to those I met at the networking event.

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Happy Cyber Monday! This is the day when people are supposed to jam the Internet and buy items online, as compared to Black Friday where people jam the malls and shop traditional brick-and-mortar stores. In this spirit, I thought I’d share today a gift idea from one of the eCommerce clients of my consulting business, Dunkirk Systems.

SportsScarf is the leader in specialized, full-color scarves promoting your team, school or business. If you are familiar with European soccer and have seen the fans wearing scarves with their team logo or country name, then you know about these scarves. You are seeing them more and more in the US every day, and the best ones come from SportsScarf.

A great gift idea is a scarf for yourself or someone else for their favorite NCAA team or nationality. If you own a business, you can custom order scarves with your logo and branding. Check out their Web site for complete custom order options and information.

Not only do they look great, but also they come in handy with the cold winter months ahead.

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Many of you are either giving or receiving digital music players of various brands for the holidays. But you need music to put on them, and this is where today’s gift idea comes into play.

Nite Train Band With The High Voltage Horns is an awesome blues band based in the Albany, NY area. My good friends Ken and Marla Briggs are members of band and their latest album is titled Best Man. It is 10 rocking blues songs and a must-have for all blues and general music fans.

Listen and see for yourself on their MySpace pages and their Web site. If you like it, you can buy it from CD Baby, DigStation and iTunes. And if you’re in the Albany area, check them out and tell Briggsy that Mikey in Chicago sent you!

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You have only through the end of the year to buy a truly unique gift – the One Laptop Per Child computer. Originally billed as the $100 notebook computer to give to children in developing countries, the cost is a little higher, and this offer allows you to buy one for yourself while at the same time buying one for a child.

For $399 plus shipping, I will get a green XO notebook computer that runs Linux with unique and useful software – more information on the machine is on their Web site. As you get one for yourself or someone else, you can deduct from your taxes $200.

I ordered one myself, and am awaiting its arrival. As someone who got into computers at a young age and made a career out of it, I appreciate the need for children to be exposed to technology early on. It is a unique item that I will be able to use for my consulting business, Dunkirk Systems, as I can test and present Web sites on it.

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