The Savvy Boomer

Repost-This is how boomers connected in the `60s and `70s

OK, for those of you locked in the sights of the Twitter generation, you probably haven't given much consideration as to how your parents or others who were either teenagers or in their early 20's connected 30 or 40 years ago because what could they possibly have to communicate that was of any interest?

For starters, if they didn't connect, most of you in the"need to know it before it happens" generation wouldn't be here.  It may come as a shock to you that we somehow managed to communicate without smart-phones, texting, emails, twitter, facebook, skype, you tube, google etc. etc.  Yeah, it was pretty slow and lame compared to the insta-communications of today, but you know what?  That's what made you cool-knowing what was going on because you were "connected."  When we heard about something interesting, we didn't feel a need to yell it out to the world.  Indeed, we usually felt a need to only share it with a few others.  And no one ever gave a flying crap what anyone else other than their close friends and maybe family were doing at any given moment in time.  And even then, no one much cared.  In the 60's, if you hung out at the A&W, you could pretty much stay in the loop. 

 

A new social networking site for 50+ Really???

I just can't believe that after 3+ years of failed social networking sites aimed at boomers, that someone in 2011 has actually said "In the last five years, I've noticed that most social websites are targeted at the thirty-something crowd, more specifically the X and Y generations,....I believe it's time there was a site that's directed towards the fifty-something and older population." 

55+ lead social networking growth

The graphs below are extracted from Comscore's 2010 Digital Year in Review for Canada.  I'd be surprised if the numbers were not similar for the U.S.  While it doesn't mean that 55+ is the largest segment of this market, it certainly does mean that we are leading the charge of new users and adapters.

Snabbo addresses time warp for boomers?

Mark at Going Like Sixty sent me an email about a new baby boomer site Snabbo.  I figured he must have been looking at an old site because after all the Facebook type boomer sites that have failed, no one could seriously start another-could they?  Yeah, Snabbo, feels they could.  A message on their site claims:

On Snabbo, baby boomers can have a 'face book' experience--only with the same 'face' they had in their heyday."

I don't really have anything to say that I haven't already said for the last couple of years about Boomer sites like this other than "Good luck with that business model."

TBD RIP

I've posted about a lot of sites that felt they had the right recipe to become the main social networking site for boomers.  I've never felt there was a formula that would allow any of them to become anymore than mildly successful but there have been a couple that I thought were well done.

TBD had a great looking site and seemed to be gaining traffic at a regular rate.  But according to TechCrunch, it's all over.  Who's next?  I wouldn't call the graph below exactly a stellar performance over the last year by EONS, the first player in this niche.  Many of the others I've posted about over the past 2+ years don't even show up on this tracking site anymore.

Facebook and Twitter is where it's at for everyone now including boomers.  We've never really felt the need to network only with people in our age group.

3 new Boomer sites

Even though some boomer/senior oriented sites are shutting down and others seem to be languishing, there are still people out there who feel they know how to succeed in this niche and new sites pop up occasionally.  However, compared to a couple of years ago when we were telling you about new sites every week, the number of new entries has declined dramatically.  I think that pretty much tells you there is no real money to be made off these types of sites.

Here are 3 more sites for you to check out.  In the past I have often commented on individual sites and have not often been very complimentary because they all seem to be pretty much the same.  I posted in detail almost 2 years ago why I'm not a fan of these sites.  That's how I feel about these 3 sites but check them out for yourself by clicking on the logos.  Maybe you'll find something you like.

This is how boomers connected in the 60s and 70s

OK, for those of you locked in the sights of the Twitter generation, you probably haven't given much consideration as to how your parents or others who were either teenagers or in their early 20's connected 30 or 40 years ago because what could they possibly have to communicate that was of any interest?

For starters, if they didn't connect, most of you in the"need to know it before it happens" generation wouldn't be here.  It may come as a shock to you that we somehow managed to communicate without smart phones, texting, emails, twitter, you tube, google etc. etc.  Yeah, it was pretty slow and lame compared to the insta-communications of today, but you know what?  That's what made you cool-knowing what was going on because you were "connected."  When we heard about something interesting, we didn't feel a need to yell it out to the world.  Indeed, we usually felt a need to only share it with a few others.  And no one ever gave a flying crap what anyone else other than their close friends and maybe family were doing at any given moment in time.  And even then, no one much cared.  In the 60's, if you hung out at the A&W, you could pretty much stay in the loop. 

How did we connect?  Well-it all depended more on who you knew, and not so much on what you knew.  For example, a lot of people didn't know about the greatest get-together of the 60's (maybe ever) called "Woodstock" until days or weeks after it happened. You may find that hard to believe since today, almost everyone on the planet knows everything about every potential "happening" thing within seconds of it being announced.

I found out about Woodstock because I happened to be in Montreal at the time and someone at a party we were at, had been at the local Playboy club (remember them?-now if you were able to get into a PB club, you were really connected)  and had overheard a musician talking about Jimi Hendrix playing in some place called Woodstock NY, the following week.  Hendrix was not mainstream back then but one of my friends who was plugged into music told us that he was great.  Good enough for us-US roadtrip- Hell yeah!!  We were off. 

The sad story is we never made it because the VW van (how classic was that?) we were driving just had no cajones left.  So after it broke down, we spent the weekend trying to drink all the COLT 45 we could find in Albany NY where it turns out one of the guys in the van met a lovely lady and last contact I had, still lives there  after he married her.   Although he was a Canadian, he still had to register but luckily, his draft lottery number was never called.

Everyone who was "connected" just seemed to know when there would be a great party, a bitchin street race, a cool protest, a much needed brawl (no weapons involved back then), a sporting event not to be missed, an awesome concert etc etc.

The point is, we didn't need or want something like a social media website to connect us to these kinds of events back then because we had our own network and methods for finding out.  If you didn't know what was going on, that's because you weren't connected either because you didn't want to be or didn't deserve to be.  Today everyone "thinks" they are connected, but those of us who lived in the 60s and 70s had to use something more than a gadget to connect and if you don't understand what I mean, I feel sorry for you. 

Reality check time.  Do you really care what anyone else is doing right now-other than your family and Obama? (and CNN pretty much has the latter covered 24x7.) 

NOTE:  Notwithstanding the above, I have several gadgets which I use to "connect" now, and I use Twitter, FB, Linked-In and of course blog.  However, I still look back on the ability to make connections the "old school way" as understanding how connections are really made.

Do boomers need to Twitter?

Twitter is the latest thing in the world of social media. There are literally thousands of articles you can read about it simply by googling it.  In short, you join, start "following" some other users and whenever you feel like it, say something in a post that is no more than 160 characters in length.  You send it and it becomes a "tweet" which can be read by anyone on Twitter, but is usually only read by those who have chosen to follow you-which are also usually people you follow. 

So why is it "the next thing" on the internet destined for the dizzying heights of Facebook, YouTube, Google etc?  I'm not really sure it is, but I have an analogy that I think helps explain its popularity. 

Remember when you were a kid and your parents told you that the family was going to Disneyland in the summer?  Remember how you felt?  You couldn't wait.  The days dragged by and it seemed that the day you would actually start on the journey would never arrive.  The pain was excruciating and sometimes the details and frustrations of the wait actually became more important to you than the vacation.

Well, Twitter allows you to experience that need for instant gratification.  As soon as something happens, you can either tell everyone about it or learn about it immediately. The most well-known example:  Pictures of the AA flight that went down in the Hudson were on Twitter before any news agency hit the airwaves with it.  But do most boomers really want or need instant gratification when it comes to information?  I doubt it.

So why do I use it?  Since I have a blog, it let's my followers know I've posted something and if they want to read it, simply click on the tweet.  I also follow a couple of sports teams and a couple of vendors that I have a current interest in.  Doing so actually saved me close to $100 on something that I was looking to buy and when a sale price was tweeted, I got it.  I also use it to follow a couple of friends who occasionally say something of interest as well as a few bloggers I follow.  Finally, I follow a few news and technical services.

But what I don't do is tweet things like "I just had a pizza for lunch and am going to blah blah blah...."  I find that kind of stuff is not only stupid but I also refuse to buy into the "too much information" syndrome that a lot of twitterers feel they must share.  I seldom Twitter more than once a day unlike some who are obsessed to Twitter every few minutes.  Those people are like the kids who must always be talking in class and for me, are the biggest downside of Twitter.  In order to avoid these blowhards, before you follow someone, look at how many "updates" they have had over the past few days and see what kinds of things they say before you follow them.

It seems the more followers you have, the more important you are.  Bullshit!  I say unless you are Obama (of course he Twitters) or some other famous celebrity or a large media outlet, if someone has thousands of followers it is only because they follow thousands of people hoping to get most of them to follow back (That's Twitter culture unless you are one of the aforementioned celebs.)  In other words, those people have way too much time on their hands.  I witnessed this because as soon as I joined, a few people started following me and I wondered "Why on earth is this person following me?"  Then when I say how many followers they had, it occurred to me that they wanted me to follow them back and get even more followers.  That's one of the silly bits of Twitter culture that has evolved.

The one thing I really dislike is trying to figure out the best way to sort through all the information.  There are a lot of apps out there that have jumped on the tweetwagon and figuring out which ones to use can be time consuming.  Also, a worm was discovered in Twitter last week.  It turned out to be harmless, but it proves that it could be just another social media application waiting to bust your computer.  It is such a popular service that it can run very slowly and even gives you this on occasion:

In summary, I think a few boomer aged people will like it, others will take it or leave it while the majority will probably view it as a waste of time which it may well be.  I have found a few organizations and people that make it worthwhile for me, but it's certainly no priority like it is for a lot of people.  I refuse to get tweets on my phone-although I did set up an account for my cell in case I see something incredible I feel I must tell the world about before I get back to my computer ie; not bloody likely.  If you do get into it, go slowly and figure out how it can benefit you and expect that to take a while.  If you want to look at some of my posts and perhaps follow me I'm at http://twitter.com/thesavvyboomer.  If you don't, I understand.