Why this is "The Original" Friends Site.

The Original Friends Site

There have been hundreds of Friends sites on the Internet. This one claims to be "the original." Why?

Well, we don't claim to be an "official" site, nor do we claim to be the fanciest, highest-tech, or even the best (although we like to think we're among them). But we are, most definitely, "the original." There are two main reasons:

1. "Original" can mean "first." This site first began on a server at Dartmouth University in Fall of 1994, when the show first aired. The internet boom was just getting underway. Neither Warner Bros. nor NBC had web pages dedicated to Friends when the show first began. There was no other Friends site of any kind. In fact, the writers and producers of the show became aware of this site early in it's life, and opened a dialog with the site creator - mainly because this site (with it's infant FAQ and Episode Guide) was the *only* Friends presence on the internet. Our early relationship with the writers are producers led to much of the early content of our FAQ document. Eventually the site creator left Dartmouth and we got our own domain name. But we know of no other Friends site which began before ours.

2. "Original" can mean "new," or "created from scratch." Many other sites on the internet publish copies of our FAQ. Many other sites borrow our episode guide, some by permission, some by plagiarism. In fact, for a while, many of the plot summaries you found on official Friends video packaging in the UK came from our Episode Guide. Many other sites publish information about Friends music, which they get from our Music doc. And many Friends sites are simply a list of links to other places. Our site, however, houses original content we've created. True, we sometimes find a fact at another site, which we use to answer people's questions, and sometimes those answers are added to our FAQ. And sometimes (thankfully) our site visitors e-mail us with helpful additional information. But we have no interest is simply re-publishing materials created on other sites. We won't waste our time duplicating what's out there. If we didn't have original content to offer, we'd close down our site.

Of course, we certainly acknowledge that our site only fills a small niche within the vast amount of Friends materials on the internet. For example, we are primarily an information site, and we deal very little in multimedia. But we like to think we are leaders in the areas we choose to work.

Thanks for visiting.