They're going public?!

The seemingly omni-present advertiser Classmates.com has taken steps toward an initial public offering, reports ZDNet.

Arguably one of the first hubs in existence for connecting to others on the internet, Classmates lacks a cache of newer entries, unlike Facebook or MySpace. But the site is hoping its 50 million users and tremendous brand awareness will prove attractive to the market at large.

Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank have all signed on as investment bankers in the IPO. Revenues for Classmates Media come mostly from paid premium accounts, but those accounts make up only a small subset of overall user numbers.

The decreasing numbers of paid users and competition from hipper sites, it seems, comprise the main speed bumps for investors.