The Yearbook

The yearbook is tradition of high school life in the United States. The book contains the name, picture, and sigture of each student in your final year, so you can remember who you went to school with. 15 year old ew Jersey school gril atherine Cook and her brother David, 16, wanted more that this. They tgought : "We don't really know our classmates fro just a picture, so why not have  a yearbook online? You could learn about people's musical tastes, the ovies they like, and so on."

Catherine thought of tge name (myYearbook.com (now meetme.com)), the slogon and the logo with two smiley faces. To advertise the site, Catherine and David wore T-shirts with the site logo on it to school and soon houndreds of their schoolmates had registered. She spent many evenings talking  on the phone to programmers  in India, and collecting ideas from her schoolmates. The her older brother geoff came up with the money to start up the website.

MyYearbook users can join in the fun by sending instantmessages and 'collecting' friends. They can bond with each other by watching the same clips from films and TV programmes, and by sharing usic, photos, homework and study guides . Some teens feel that they don't fin in at school, but can make friends more easily online. CHatting online helps some shy people not to feel left out.

On the site, members can also earn 'Lunch Money', a virtual currency, by completing activites on the site, or they can but it with real cash. They can then spend their Lunch MOney on virtual gifts, or donate it to charties in the myYearbook 'causes' programme. Lunch Money donations have saved 0.3 km²  of rainforest, cleaned up 1 million kg of Co₂, sent 22.000 books to Africa, and bought 20.000 kg of rice for people without enough food.

Running the website did not stop Catherine and david from completing their schoolwork successfully, and going on to university, where they still anaged to put in 50 hours a week developing the site.