- Allan M. Kleiman (Old Bridge Pub­lic Library)

inter­net is not gray yet
“while you were whale watch­ing, some of us were watch­ing the salmon spawn“
whale watch­ing = myspace, face­book
salmon spawn = cranky & other senior sites
sites that are spawn­ing and going upstream to die
what has spawned is some­thing “new” and “excit­ing” in social net­work­ing
com­par­ing the whale and the salmon is interesting

when peo­ple think of senior sites on the web, they only think of AARP, but that’s not really a social net­work­ing site
most of all, you need to share today’s infor­ma­tion with your col­leagues and the boomers and older adults who use your library

the num­bers are con­fus­ing
22% of seniors 65 and older use the inter­net (Pew)
fastest grow­ing seg­ment of inter­net users are those 85+
– well, if you have no one 85+ using the inter­net and then you do, it’s the fastest-growing segment

cur­rently 35 mil­lion older adults and by 2020 the older adults pop­u­la­tion will dou­ble
big busi­ness in devel­op­ing & “hook­ing” the baby boomers now
they’re try­ing to hook them into social net­work­ing sites, but how? no idea because don’t see any ads, fly­ers, etc.
older adults are not attracted to these lifestyle web­sites
sites that are con­nected to another orga­ni­za­tion are doing well, while inde­pen­dent sites are not doing so well
they all have the same col­ors and design and look the same after awhile

Senior­Net was the first orga­ni­za­tion to develop senior sites around the US, but you had to pay to join and that usu­ally doesn’t work with how libraries oper­ate
Allan’s library is work­ing with Senior­Net to expand their ser­vices into libraries
their web­site is good for view­ing struc­tured online learn­ing; they have book clubs, blogs, etc.
every­one else’s site looks the same, but they did it first

Third Age was the “first” social net­work­ing (learn­ing) site in 1997

all of these sites are intended for upper to mid­dle class, white, women
no com­pa­ra­ble site for men yet

Eons site
they know noth­ing about their users’ lifestyles and don’t mar­ket to them
focus on peo­ple, fun, love, money, body, lifepath, obits (ha!), games, travel
was founded by Monster.com CEO Jeff Tay­lor, but he’s not a boomer so he doesn’t get it
most of the boomer web­sites are look­ing at peo­ple with money, hop­ing you’ll click on com­pa­nies who can help you travel, invest money, etc.
Eons has $32 mil­lion invest­ment
half of their staff was let go, though

begin­ning to see the col­lapse of the new hope of social net­work­ing sites
let the com­pe­ti­tion begin
if a site is not allied with an orga­ni­za­tion, it is run­ning on ven­ture cap­i­tal invest­ments hop­ing to reap rewards

what is use­ful?
– more friendly ver­sions of myspace and face­book
– “Eons, Rezoom, Mul­ti­ply (a fancier Flickr; don’t even men­tion money, life, etc.; only site that shows peo­ple of dif­fer­ent ages and col­ors), Maya’s Mom, Boomj, and Boomer­town. They look like Face­book — with wrin­kles.” NYT 9/12/2007
— also said “old peo­ple are sticky,” mean­ing brand-loyal
but boomers are not brand loyal

new search engine — http://cranky.com/
it’s an out­growth of eons
found the 5000 most pop­u­lar web­sites among a group of 500,000 web users aged 45 and older and rated each site
pos­si­bly based on ask.com’s search engine
about once or twice a day, they change the rank­ings on the home page
#1 search was about sex
which isn’t sur­pris­ing, any good social net­work­ing sites for seniors will include com­pan­ion­ship
(at his library, they’re request­ing a speed dat­ing night for seniors!)
also high in rank­ings
– longevity cal­cu­la­tor
– sudoku
– eat healthy
– jobs after retire­ment
– wall­pa­pers
– online dat­ing
– retire­ment com­mu­nity
– work from home

the search here is non­threat­en­ing and eas­ier to use, eas­ier to read because of lower start­ing set
results are com­pa­ra­ble to yahoo
almost 80% of what he picks up on cranky dupli­cates what he gets on google
they only dis­play 4 results per page
head­ing = cRANKy
because it’s con­nected with eons, their con­tent is listed and linked to at the bot­tom of each page

what’s new out there?
eldr.com — mis­sion is to help baby boomers and their aging par­ents deal with the chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties of aging by pro­vid­ing the most use­ful thought-provoking and trusted infor­ma­tion avail­able any­where
one issue is out
web­site looks the same as the other senior sites
believes this will stay around because there is a com­ple­men­tary mag­a­zine and because it was started by a builder of homes for older adults; he wants to give back to the com­mu­nity for the peo­ple he works with

oth­ers
– redhatsociety.com; 40,000 chap­ters in US/worldwide; wear red hats, pur­ple dress
— “all my life I’ve done for you, now it’s my turn to do for me“
— another site that’s based on an orga­ni­za­tion
– Boomers! TV: Redefin­ing life after 50
— pro­duc­ing shows on PBS about grow­ing older, retire­ment, etc.; site has a lit­tle social networking

gray­ing of the inter­net is really about blog­ging
AP found that seniors love blog­ging because it helps them keep their minds going, keep your­self up-to-date because you’re ready other blogs, can share life expe­ri­ences, can meet other peo­ple from across the world
in some cases, senior blogs give the authors a bit of fame
3% of seniors in the US have cre­ated a blog
17% have read some­one else’s blog
22% of amer­i­cans aged 65 and older use the inter­net (1 in 5)

The Age­less Project
a web­site that lists blogs or web­sites of peo­ple in order of their birth year; there are 2 sites for peo­ple over age 90!
(sites with no com­mer­cial con­tent)
Allan’s library is start­ing a blog­ging class next month
will try to mar­ket the blogs of the class participants

so what do we do with all of this infor­ma­tion?
there’s life beyond myspace
– we should show peo­ple Cranky in com­puter class train­ing
– link some of these resources from your library’s web­site (libraries usu­ally link to neg­a­tive sites, whereas social net­work­ing sites are usu­ally pos­i­tive
– join the sites and test them; oth­er­wise you won’t really under­stand what they do
– become a par­tic­i­pant
– add web 2.0 tech­nol­ogy to your web classes
– pro­vide feed­back, both pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive to the sites

social net­work­ing sites for seniors are here to stay, even if these spe­cific sites don’t survive

things that Old Bridge PL can do that you can, too
– have cre­ated a “senior space,” pos­si­bly the first in the US (users can lis­ten to records)
— phase one set up the area
— phase two is to develop a web 2.0 class­room where seniors can also use com­put­ers on their own
— adding a “let’s try it” lab­o­ra­tory
— adding to their class list based on their Advi­sory Board
– first library to launch Wii for older adults on Novem­ber 9
— teens will teach the older adults to Wii
— plan­ning for a Wii NJ tour­na­ment in spring 2008
– are re-training their librar­i­ans to train 2.0

keep look­ing for infor­ma­tion about what’s going on with older adults and social networking

his pre­sen­ta­tion will be at libraryolderadults.blogspot.com or infolink.org/seniorspaces

ques­tion: you didn’t men­tion AARP, why not?
answer: AARP is still an infor­ma­tional site, not a social net­work­ing site; it’s not the site I think of when I want to go some­where and have fun; I use it a lot and link to it, but doesn’t see it as a true inter­ac­tive site where peo­ple can meet

ques­tion: ABA is look­ing at imple­ment­ing MyABA; do you have point­ers for how to get peo­ple to use these sites?
answer: you’ll have to do a lot of hand-holding and tuto­ri­als; train the assis­tants (para­le­gals, sec­re­taries, etc.) to help them

ques­tion: do you know if web­mas­ters at these sites are talk­ing to boomers and seniors?
answer: doesn’t think so because the sites don’t reflect these groups; that’s why we need to join these things and com­ment on them — help them change the con­tent to make it more use­ful for us and for the community

No tags for this post.