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Boomers Are On the Social Web

Posted by Nick O'Neill on March 27th, 2008 9:47 AM

Yesterday I spent a large portion of the day at the Boomer Business Summit. While on a panel, I asked the crowd how many people were on Facebook and how many people were on a social network in general. Over half the crowd was on a social network and close to 50 percent were on Facebook. It was pretty surprising. This was also a biased sample because they had come to the panel on social networking for Boomers.

The main lesson that I learned was that this crowd was a highly active group of people that may be wiser but don’t feel older. They are young at heart and still exploring what the world has to offer. I told one person that it’s unfortunate that curiosity is now a unique trait and that I’m pleasantly surprised when I meet a group of inquisitive individuals. This group of people for the most part were involved in leveraging these new technologies to create buzz for their businesses.

There was only one person that I met that was still resisting the changing going on around him but even he wanted to know how to find the most influential blogs in his market (even though he knowingly only read one blog, Perez Hilton). While I often think of early adopters as young individuals, I met a number of early adopters while at the conference including one Boomer who was highly active on Twitter.

The lesson learned is don’t ignore this group of individuals. They are a massive market and you may be surprised just how youthful they still are (I hope this doesn’t sound too much like a young person’s analysis). Also, this group won’t be retiring anytime soon. So don’t forget about this crowd when developing your product or service even if it is on the web.

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    Great post, Nick. Completely agreed that we should all be making sure we pay attention to the Boomers in our work. I think our stereotypes and tendencies as bloggers, website runners, etc are to assume that anyone over the age of 40 is set in their ways. Obviously it's completely untrue.

    Sites like Eons - the Facebook for Boomers (www.eons.com) - are exploding in membership and as you obviously saw Facebook itself is growing tremendously in the over-50 crowd. There was a great article written recently (can't find it at the moment) about how many Boomers with adult children were getting on Facebook first to stay connected to their kids (like my mother for instance), but then started finding other virtues to being part of such an online network as they found other friends...and of course Scrabulous.

    At Idealist we hired someone last year to focus entirely on people in a mid-career stage of life and in retirement and it has paid off tremendously. As you said, these folks are not retiring. Instead many are taking on what we and others are calling "encore careers" (a term coined by Mark Friedman in his book "Encore"). One of the great organizations we've been working with on these ideas has been Civic Ventures out of San Francisco which has all kinds of great information about what the most active and innovative Boomers are up to these days. www.civicventures.org

    Also, ironically enough, the American Society of Aging Conference is going on today and tomorrow here in DC (www.asaging.org) for anyone interested.
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    Hi Nick

    It's encouraging that you are seeing this demographic starting to explore the social web. My own experience of trying to get older family members I am connected with to use even Facebook has been mixed. They often give it a try and then lose interest which suggests they are not finding anything of value or that meets a need in their lives right now.

    Their absence on the wider social web is a loss, particularly for businesses, because they are often the people with the most carefully thought out opinions and insights based on a lot of experience.

    I wrote a post on how I am trying to encourage boomers to use a social network (http://tinyurl.com/3c2zue) although my advice probably applies to any age of person. Did the people at the Summit describe how they got started using online social tools?
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    If you would like to see some boomers participating in a social network site, check out The Greenhouse ( http://thegreenhouse.gardenfork.tv )

    I created a community site for viewers of our shows, Gardenfork.tv and RealWorldGreen.com, that runs on top of Ning, and I've found that many of our viewers do not use Facebook or MySpace, but will use a site that appeals to their interests.

    The Greenhouse succeeds, I believe, because it isn't Facebook, or a Group within Facebook. Its like a small social club where they are among like minded people.

    The key here is they want to engage on this site, so they do. Facebook or MySpace are not nearly as compelling for them.

    Boomers are using social networks, just not the same ones as 20 year olds.

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