Monday
Sep172007
Online meeting places for baby boomers
Monday, September 17, 2007 at 04:46PM
While teens and 20-somethings have MySpace and Facebook and young professionals have LinkedIn, the next frontier for online social networks is boomers. Sites such as Eons, BOOMj and TeeBeeDee are what Matt Richtel of The New York Times refers to as "Facebook -- with wrinkles."
On Eons, members can use Brain Builder tools, calculate their longevity and vote and comment on featured articles, such as "Where were you in 1964?" or "Best senior-friendly cars for 2007."
According to Richtel, boomers are less likely than youngsters to flit from one trendy site to the next. This stickiness is helping drive a wave of new investment into boomer- and older-oriented social networking sites that offer like-minded (and like-aged) individuals discussion and dating forums, photo-sharing, news, and chatter about diet, fitness and health care.
These Boomer networks may not flourish to the ranks of Facebook or Bebo. But in the expanding environment of niche social networks, these sites mean that boomers, too, can form their own online communities - something that investors and marketers have been paying attention to (and it should be on the minds of PR practitioners as well).
On Eons, members can use Brain Builder tools, calculate their longevity and vote and comment on featured articles, such as "Where were you in 1964?" or "Best senior-friendly cars for 2007."
According to Richtel, boomers are less likely than youngsters to flit from one trendy site to the next. This stickiness is helping drive a wave of new investment into boomer- and older-oriented social networking sites that offer like-minded (and like-aged) individuals discussion and dating forums, photo-sharing, news, and chatter about diet, fitness and health care.
These Boomer networks may not flourish to the ranks of Facebook or Bebo. But in the expanding environment of niche social networks, these sites mean that boomers, too, can form their own online communities - something that investors and marketers have been paying attention to (and it should be on the minds of PR practitioners as well).
Reader Comments