How would you feel if you get a mail from an old school friend with whom you lost contact 13 long years ago.
This is what happened with me within a few days I registered on BATCHMATES.COM
It was truly Ecstatic.Totally unexpected.
The Company
Batchmates.com is a portal wholly owned , developed and managed by the Kolkata based ALLINDIA.COM a leading web based solution providing company.
They boast of over 2, 000, 000 members(alumni) from all over the world.
The concept
The name says it all.The whole idea of this site is to re-unite batchmates of school, Colleges, Universities.And lately they have even added a category for the Armed forces, Civil services and Companies.
It aims to provide a platform to locate , contact and keep in touch with old long lost pals using e-mail, creating buddy lists and online messaging facility provided on the site.
Join and who knows you might find your favorite school time chum right there.
The look and feel
This is a No-Nonsense site.No jazzy flash animations wizzing across the screen.
The homepage is plain and simple but well organized, so finding or searching for anything here should not be much of a problem even to the first time visitor.By default the site opens up for the users from India. Not sure why, might be cos this is an Indian site or it’s possible that they open up the page depending on from where we are accessing the site.Some web sites use that technology.
Registration
A very well organised site.No hiccups anywhere.
Start by searching your country->state->city->YOur Institute.
On selecting the institute the registration screen pops up.This is also pretty fast and does not expect a whole lot of senseless info from the user.
Enter Info like the Year you joined and left the institute, Name and other personal details, login and contact info and Voila ! you are ready for a happy re-union with someone !
Whatever info is asked is for you to have a easily identifiable identity on the site, so people searching for you can easily locate you !
You can register with multiple institutes also.
Navigation and Search
Full Marks here too.
As soon as you log in with your id, you even have a choice as to what should be the first page you want to be displayed.
Navigation from one part of the site to another is a piece of cake.No need to keep pressing that BACK button of your browser again and again.The site is pretty fast too.Dint face any hassle of any page taking long to load.
The search is absolutely fantastic.They have drilled down the search facility to such an extent that you are bound to find what you are looking for easily and through any way that is convenient to you.
Search for institutions by name->First/Last or by their location.
Once you get the institute search for your batchmate or buddy.Search alphabetically or by the year they passed out from the institute.
Searching for someone directly by name is resulting in error these days, Might be a temporary problem.
If the institute of organization you belonged to is not there. you can go ahead and create it then and there.It’s that simple.
Inside Batchmates
A whole lot of features available on this site....
send and receive e-mails to/from batchmates members
create a list of Buddies on the site
This will help you to organize your friends list better. you can then send group messages to all or select buddies on BATCHMATES.
Bulletin Board
You can announce forthcoming events in your institution like an Alumni get-together or something.
Chat
Photo Gallery
Would’nt it be fun to see your childhood school time snaps if anyone has it and he/she has uploaded it. WOW !!!
etc etc....
Friendship is a golden chain, the links are friends so dear, and like a rare and precious jewel It’s treasured more each year
so log in and pray that you bump into your FIRST CRUSH !!! Sadly I dint !