Wired and wizened
Jeff Taylor, the founder of Monster.com, started a new website service called eons.com. The site is targeted at "50+" users and looks like an older version of myspace or facebook, kind of a snoozester for geezers (ed note: I turn 50 myself this year).
The site offers things like a longevity calendar, a "lifemap" where you can store your life memories (in case you get Alzheimers, I guess) and sex tips for older people.
The weirdest thing, IMHO, is a service that you can sigh up for that I can only call social deathworking. You give them some personal information and they try to figure out who you know that's just died and send you a message telling you so.
The take-home point here is that the Internet is no longer just for nerds, nor is it an extended teenage club. Niches for every age group will be discovered and serviced. There's a lot of money mining gold out of the silver-haired. This site is a good example: 50+ people have the bucks and the time to use a tailored service like this.
A site like this catering to the older crowd might be lucrative too: maybe the billing system could be written so that it would prompt them for an annual subscription every couple months hoping they've forgotten that they've already paid.
Posted on August 02, 2006
