Five years ago, Julie Pankhurst was in maternity leave, bored at home; she wanted to learn new things and find other women in the same situation as her. She thought that some of her old school friends must have been like her, so she proposed the creation of a contact Web page to her husband, Steve, a computer technician, to get in touch with them.Steve didn?t like the idea at first, but then he did it, he created Friends Reunited. It soon became a real social network with one million paying users; their annual turnover reached 18 million euros. Five years later, ITV, a British TV channel, has bought the Web site for the incredible amount of 177 million euros.An idea and loads of buzz marketing have been the essential elements to spread the existence of Friends Reunited among the people without TV ads. The Web site has been widely echoed in the press thanks to stories like divorces provoked by the reunion of old school lovers.By the way, FriendsReunited had a Spanish version: AmistadesReunidas.com; it was launched in 2000 and didn?t work out all right. Actually, it doesn?t exist anymore.Last news (3/01/06): today I?ve received a call from Sud Media, a French company; they wanted to clarify the reason why the Spanish version of Friends-Reunited didn?t succeed. Apparently, it signed a contract in 2002 with the British headquarters to localize the Web site in France, Italy, Australia and Spain, in exchange of 20% of the turnover in the European countries. But the agreement was finished a year later, after having earned 1.575 pounds for all the work, estimated in 120.000 euros. That?s why Sud Media wants everybody to know the truth about the failure of the Spanish version of Friends Reunited.