In summary a group of people have been after me for years and have completed a 12-year investigation into the history of FR in an attempt to discredit me.
For background to this story read:
The
FriendsReunited Conspiracy (?) – Part 1 - Introduction
Now to discuss in
more detail what they actually claim.
In simple terms,
these people allege that we have lied about the setting up of FR – from how we
set the site up, the dates when we did so, the ISP we used, to when the first
version of the site went live. Their objective is to show that we effectively
took the FR idea from them: a developer they used – whom we are supposed to
know – is alleged to have been the person who told us about the online school
reunion concept before we came up with it.
Background. Julie
had the idea for FriendsReunited in 1999. In June 2000, we registered the
FriendsReunited URL, and launched the first simple version of the site. This
will all be discussed in a later blog.
These people
claim to have come up with their similar idea in July 2000 (according to their
statement) but didn’t launch until late 2000/early 2001 it appears.
Here’s the thing:
They claim we did
not actually launch till late 2000.
They claim that
we know the developer they initially engaged to write their site.
They claim that
our site idea came directly from their developer.
They claim that
we somehow backdated our domain registration, and were in collusion with the
first ISP we used (and, it appears, with Nominet too) to falsely backdate our
story.
In essence, they
claim the whole story of FR from 1999 to early 2001 is a lie.
They claim that
since then we have been involved in a massive cover up -nearly everyone
associated with FR is in on this.
They allege that
we have done nothing to help them in researching their insulting claims, and
have continued to lie and deceive over the “cover-up”.
Julie and I, along with
dozens of family and friends who worked on FR are extremely proud of what we
created and achieved with FR. It helped tens of thousands of people in a
positive way and for that we are truly humble. We also worked unbelievably
hard, not just since the launch of FR in June 2000, but for many years building
up to then.
Over its history we had to
deal with many issues, mostly positive but also the negative and in some cases
malicious. From threats to being blamed for breakups to boring contractual
stuff – all were dealt with. However, in all my working life I have never felt
such disgust or anger as I have through dealing with these absurd allegations,
over the past 7 years. How these people can devote so much of their life, finances
and time in trying to discredit us amazes me. It is a disgrace and all involved
should be ashamed of themselves.
For long periods
we have ignored these people but when someone continually tries to discredit a
whole 18-month period of your life – basically saying we lied about it all –
then you can understand why I am now doing this.
I have given them simple, unequivocal
proof of the setup of FR. They choose not just to ignore the incontrovertible
facts but also to contort them so that those facts are warped into fitting their wild conspiracy theory. And they use some pretty, heavy tactics in doing
so.
Well gloves off – in future blogs I will
write further about the history of FR and show with embarrassing clarity how
deluded these people’s claims are.
But first, coming
next – The FriendsReunited Conspiracy (?) – Part 3 – Their Contact
@spankyhurst