Online: The internet is a wonderful way to reconnect with old friends, and there are several options for how you can do it too. For one, you can use social networking sites, which is likely to be the most effective method; another option is to hire or pay to use a "classmate finder" type site, although these are not cost effective, and sometimes do little more than you can do on your own with a little digging. And there are other options like trying old email addresses you have for them, doing a google search on their name to see if you can find a blog or a website or something of theirs, etc.

Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, are all examples of social networking sites that can help you reconnect with your past college friends. In many cases all you need is a name, and you can search through all registered users with that name and see pictures until you find them. In other cases you can narrow you search further by inputting the college info as well. It is amazing how complex these things can be, and how simple they make it to find your friends, assuming they are on the sites, but with social networking becoming so huge, there is a great chance that they are.

Through Alumni database: If you went to college with the person, there is a good chance that you can find them through the college. Colleges do a fairly good job of keeping track of their past students. They may do this by tracking where you are making your student loan payments, or by asking you to keep their database up to date etc. Basically Alumni are an important part of a good college, and so there are usually good records. So, if your friend graduated, there is a pretty good chance you can find them by looking through the alumni database. Every school has different privacy measures in place, but usually you can see a name and email address, or name and phone number without a problem. It is like a directory for alum.

Through other friends: An effective method for finding old college friends is that of talking to other college friends. If you know where one person is from your college days, they probably know where someone else is, who knows someone else, etc. Often the best way to get a hold of someone hard to find is by finding someone else who knew them too. This can be fun in more ways than one. Not only does it help you to find the friend you were searching out, but allows you to reconnect with other past friends as well. You could have a college reunion even.