With Baby Boomers and Generation Jones (the long-lost generation between the Boomers and Xers, born 1954-1965, 26% of all U.S. adults) receiving huge media attention in Western Europe, and now increasingly in the U.S. It has only been natural that marketers flock to them like moths to a flame.
Boomers and Jonesers were both born during the post-WWII 20-year boom in births, but they were raised with very different experiences, which is why so many credible organizations and individuals have been validating the GenJones concept, and spending big chunks of cash targeting Jonesers and Boomers.
Now that they have reached the pinnacle of their spending capabilities, social networks and their advertisers are now trying to seperate them from their cash with the premise that they should connect, explore and share with other likeminded Boomers.
Having said that, we have compiled a somewhat uptodate list of sites. A quick glance through of all the sites and we noticed that some had obviously have been well-funded and designed, and that others looked more like those old subdomain tripod/earthlink/geocities sites. The top three that caught our eye were reZOOM, BOOMj and BoomerGirl. They had clean layouts, and yet were visually interesting and inviting. It made you want to drill down a little further.
http://www.myboomerplace.com/
http://www.e-seniors-village.com/
http://www.boomersint.org/
http://www.babyboomerpeoplemeet.com/
http://www.bbhq.com/
http://www.babyboomers.org/
http://www.grandtimes.com/index.html
Redwood Age
eGenerations.com
Boomer Time
Growing Bolder
Boomer Living
My Primetime
Second Prime Time
Maple and Leek (UK)
GrownUps (NZ)
Wanobe.com (UK)
A purist would dispute how many of these are ‘proper’ social networking sites. Many place the emphasis on magazine-content (produced by professional producers) rather than web 2.0 user-generated content.
One that seems successful at generating user content is iyomu.com. The communities and discussions are all relevant baby boomer conversations.
Steve, thanks for stopping by and adding your site to the mix!
YOu forgot to mention the number on site for “baby boomer women” on Google, http://www.boomerwomenspeak.com. BWS has been online for 5 years and has over 60 forums where women are corresponding 24/7.
Oops, that’s the number one site!
Check out http://www.newretirement.com/ - mostly financial planning reference right now, but does contain an active Answers section.