Will Eskwela replace the class reunion?

After over a dozen invites, I finally gave in and tried Eskwela.com. We had a sneak preview account before it was launched last year but it was way deep in the beta (or was it alpha?) version to really try out and write a fair review. A recent assignment (Friend Request) prompted me to revisit the site. Unlike before, the bugs have been sorted out and the site loads quite fast (not sure if that’s good or bad as an indication of visitor usage) and according to Alexa, site usage has been steadily climbing.

The main page displays their total market reach — 862 universities, 6,639 high schools, 42,644 elementary schools, 1,526 companies. Impressive collection of data, IMO, but they don’t indicate specific user statistics. A recent article in Inquirer pegs the number close to 50,000 members.

Eskwela

The article also quoted 3,000 new member sign-ups every week, but if you log in inside, you will see a list of new member sign-ups in the last 6 days. From my recent count, the site only gets between 4 to 6 new members per day — this is based on the last 5 days from yesterday (total 23 news signups). My interpretation of that recent members could be wrong but it sure does indicate the level of activity within the network.

Moving forward, realizing that Eskwela seems to be filling the void that Friendster left and narrowing the niche, I wonder if the day will come that Eskwela will replace the class reunion. If high-school batch mates are connected online and always updated with each other thru social network sites like Eskwela, will reunions be unnecessary in the future? There won’t be any excitement at all and no surprises between classmates who have might have gotten married, had kids, joined the convent or visited the Moon.

I’ve never attended any class reunions ever, not that I’m that old to be attending one. But surely, sites like Eskwela.com is a good replacement to re-connect with your old friends and school mates — if only everybody’s in there too.

P.S. If you’re also on Eskwela, you can add me up thru my Gmail account.

Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

https://www.yugatech.com

9 Comments

Abe Olandres says:

17 years ago

Terence, I think Friendster got out of the red because Google saved them with that multi-year ad lock-up. If the number of CEOs changing over at F in the last couple of years was any indication, I thought they were heading to the dumps.

As for Eskwela, I do hope you’d be able to get it off the ground real soon. Some people are whispering it’s bleeding money all over.
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Terence Pua says:

17 years ago

@yuga – Friendster’s ad model has not failed. As a matter of fact, it is thriving. I’m no longer connected with F so I can’t give any details.

RE: Eskwela business model – we are currently focused on growing the community. There are various monetization mechanisms we can employ but would rather not get into that right now.

@andrew – What makes you say our 75k+ members is not translating into traffic? Do you have info I don’t have :)
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Abe Olandres says:

17 years ago

Terence, thanks for the correction. On another note, considering the failure of Friendster to take off in the advertising department, do you think the AdSense model pays off all your team’s hard work?

The rest, I still think it will ruin the surprise factor.
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Nick says:

17 years ago

@Skye, we definitely agree on the reunion aspect of social networking sites.

The main use of these sites is definitely to keep us up to date with what is happening with our old friends, and even family members…

@Andrew, I agree with you. Eskwela should be supported…
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Andrew says:

17 years ago

I honestly want Eskwela to succeed. But why are the 75k++ members not translating into traffic?
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Skye says:

17 years ago

I’ve been on it for a long time now, but I sadly neglected it. Social networking sites are crap for it. It’s useless. There’s nothing like good old reunions, with all the back slapping and green jokes happening. I do like how the site improved over the months though. So kudos to Terence over there.

I like how they value user feedback. I once suggested something in the forum, and it ended up being implemented.
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Terence Pua says:

17 years ago

Thanks for you review.

Clarification: the new sign ups you quoted is coming only from your school. Our total daily sign ups from ALL schools is much higher.

RE: speed of site – we have moved our entire infrastructure to Amazon EC2 so Eskwela is much faster. We also use memcache and web server balancing.

Btw, we now have over 75k+ members from the last Inquirer count.

Look for a new push with a new feature called “Headlines” this coming week.
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Nick says:

17 years ago

Of course it won’t replace the class reunion. Eskwela looks nice, but I think the majority of Filipinos are already deeply embedded with Yahoo Groups as well as Friendster.

The fun thing that seems to have most people going back to reunions are what people look like now at the present, the different groups that reunite, talking behind people’s back, asking how much people make, purveying the usual gossips, and so on and so forth..

Online, although an excellent venue for getting together, will never be the same as the normal reunions, within these reunions, you get that hug from your former girlfriend or boyfriend, you get to eat with old friends, and the conversations are more fluid…

Eskwela, Friendster, Facebook, Myspace, Yahoo Groups, Twitter, etc.. these are all good, but reality is so much better when it comes to get-togethers..
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