Old People Now Have a Place to Hang Out

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1. Kevin Boyer
   

   August 1st, 2006 at 4:10 pm

   Hell yeah the obituaries section is distasteful. Unbelievable. :/

2. Skeptical Crunchie
   

   August 1st, 2006 at 4:22 pm

   Big mistake here. He should have aimed higher. RetirementHomeSpace is a ripe market. Can’t tell you how many retirement homes I’ve visited where the residents blog and IM all day. Blogging seems to be real popular with the 80 year old women, while the guys in their 70s love chatting up widows on AIM.

3. Guk
   

   August 1st, 2006 at 4:22 pm

   Everyday new social networks comes up narrowing the theme. Will these new startups kill MySpace? Are they taking away a group away from MySpace?

4. Skeptical Crunchie
   

   August 1st, 2006 at 4:35 pm

   Guk: If social networks with narrower themes can add value then I see them putting a dent in MySpace. MySpace, IMO, has the worst aggregate audience that you could want and it’s extremely fickle. Throw in all the problems they have on a constant basis and I think they’re a lot less dominant than they might appear. Until MySpace turns a profit, forget all the hype about the elusive demographic MySpace has. There’s way too much sleeze.

   A site like Eons has a good foundation in that the growing baby boomer population has lots of disposible cash that is ripe for the taking, but this service looks to be providing things that don’t appeal to the target audience which is not uncommon when the founder isn’t part of that audience. Baby boomers, for the most part, have no interest in online profiles, blogs, etc. Just applying the traditional SN model to a new theme without having features and/or a business model that caters to that theme is pointless.

   I personally see offline as a better way to reach the baby boomer population but that’s not to say that online ventures targeting the demographic can’t have success too. I just think it’s much more difficult. Jeff Taylor would have been wiser to invest his money in a new business that provides a tangible service baby boomers want or need.

5. Phil
   

   August 1st, 2006 at 4:44 pm

   OK. Who here hangs out with older folks? Obituaries might be distasteful, but the audience Eons is interested in flips right to ‘em in their newspaper. Pretty much every day, as far as I’ve ever been able to tell.

6. Greg
   

   August 1st, 2006 at 5:43 pm

   Yeah I work with some 60 year olds and the browse the obits every week. I know it sounds morbid but people like to know if their friends have passed.

7. Simran
   

   August 1st, 2006 at 8:34 pm

   The obituary thing sounds morbid.

8. Jim Kerr
   

   August 1st, 2006 at 8:48 pm

   Guk and Skeptical Crunchie have nailed it. My company believes that Social Subnetworks will be a major theme in 2007, and they will have a definite impact on MySpace. It won’t be in a declining user base, but in fewer page views and time on-site. It will be very similar to the losses terrestrial radio are facing–the number of people using terrestrial radio is at an all-time high, but they are using radio much less. This is the impact you will see smaller networks have on MySpace. It’s the natural result of increased competition.

   I don’t get Michael’s criticism of the site. I have no clue if it will take off or not, but the structure appears sound as a social network for older adults. His comment that the users can find the separate elements elsewhere could have been leveled at MySpace, too. But the community element overcame the fact that its component parts were hardly unique.

   As to the obituaries… Michael just doesn’t understand the audience. As Phil and Greg point out. It’s a core content item for many of the potential Eons users.

9. Phillip G
   

   August 1st, 2006 at 9:06 pm

   quote:
   But gimmicks aside, as I said above my main issue with the site is that they are trying to be a blog, a myspace-type home page, a to-do list and a portal for its users, among many other things. It’s too much to throw at people at once, and this age group is perfectly capable of using Yahoo for a portal, Vox for a blogging platform, etc. I would have started out with just the Myspace angle and added functionality from there as users grew, a model that has worked well for many other startups. Do one thing better than everyone else.

   Man…. that one hit the nail… even for some of my ideas for websites with social networking built into the concept. Its not always true but for the most part it is.

   As far as the obits, it might be morbid but they do look at them pretty consistantly. I’m not sure about the funeral home ad and netflix being on the page with it though.

10. Peter
    

    August 1st, 2006 at 9:09 pm

    great name. here’s the sales pitch:

    are you eons old? are the rocks in your back yard only half as old as you? then join eons. with one foot in the grave already, what’ve you got to lose?

11. Nick Douglas
    

    August 1st, 2006 at 9:26 pm

    They totally stole the Obits idea from LiveJournal.

12. Stewart
    

    August 1st, 2006 at 10:13 pm

    “My company believes that Social Subnetworks will be a major theme in 2007, and they will have a definite impact on MySpace. It won’t be in a declining user base, but in fewer page views and time on-site. It will be very similar to the losses terrestrial radio are facing–the number of people using terrestrial radio is at an all-time high, but they are using radio much less. This is the impact you will see smaller networks have on MySpace. It’s the natural result of increased competition.”

    Ding ding ding. We have a winner.

    One of the criticisms being leveled at a lot of the subnetworks coming out is that they’re simply taking MySpace’s features and applying them to a niche. Well that’s the point. Features are important to a point but it’s more about community than features. Don’t get me wrong… features and differentiation are important but the execution on building a community is more important. If you can copy MySpace’s features and find a strategy to build a large subnetwork that’s all that matters. It may not be sexy but a lot of the startups featured here have a lot of sex appeal and will go nowhere. Who cares about a new RSS aggregation tool with some obscure new features that only a geek would love?? Real money is in real people.

    FWIW: MySpace wasn’t an entirely new concept. Geocities and Angelfire were early versions of MySpace in some sense. There’s room for multiple players in this market. There will be many subnetworks that fail but others will survive, especially those that don’t take $10 million from VCs before they even launch. And subnetworks that target highly lucrative niches might be more profitable with 2m members than a meganetwork like MySpace with 90+ m. Less overhead, higher revenue per user.

13. Dan Tudor
    

    August 1st, 2006 at 10:25 pm

    Will the website be formatted with large print text?

14. Jason Tomes
    

    August 1st, 2006 at 10:58 pm

    Okay, I have seen some pretty crazy marketing schemes…like the datings site http://www.farmersonly.com “city folks just don’t get it”, or http://www.top20network.com “Uniting trust fund babies all over the country”, but this one really takes the cake…nothing says “I am old” like death alerts, but I do applaude Jeff..the marketing and free press is beautiful

15. SomeYungGuy
    

    August 2nd, 2006 at 4:56 am

    The idea is great, but I think the rate of attrition is going to kill him
    *buh-duh-CHHHH!*

16. Jafar
    

    August 2nd, 2006 at 5:52 am

    I have to agree with Phil, my grandma’s favorite program on the TV is the obituaries. And the idea of 70 year old men chatting up widows is hilarious.

    I see alot of future in this sort of service, especially if its user friendly and has great original content. I disagree with Michael, I find that our elders are perfectly able to adapt to fairly complex websites… or don’t go on the internet at all.

17. Brian
    

    August 2nd, 2006 at 7:32 am

    Why are obituaries distasteful? Is it distasteful when a newspaper has an obits section? When my mom died I really liked being able to notify the community with a nice description of her life a picture of her.

    I looked at the obits page on eons.com. It looks fine to me. The fact is, old people want to know when their friends have passed away. At that age, it happens a lot. They check the obits to find out.

    The fact that the obits page is sponsored by NetFlix is probably just due to Eons being new and not having a lot of advertisers yet.

18. Faith Martin
    

    August 2nd, 2006 at 8:25 am

    At 59, I just want you to know I don’t flip to Obituaries. Stock market quotes maybe, real estate market, you bet…obituaries…not yet. : )

19. Art Koff
    

    August 2nd, 2006 at 8:37 am

    Eons is certainly an interesting site, but does not offer older workers any help in finding employment. Sites like RetiredBrains.com and RetirementJobs.com provide a forum where older workers can search for jobs at no charge or post their resumes free and where employers looking to hire older and more experienced workers can reach them for part-time, temporary jobs or project assignments.

20. Brent Edwards
    

    August 2nd, 2006 at 5:03 pm

    I blogged about this concept at just a couple months ago. One of the points I highlighted was that this group is going to have different needs that the mySpace crowd, and the offerings are going to have to be simpler to use. I work in the hearing aid world, so I know about the special design needs of this age group.

21. Brent Edwards
    

    August 2nd, 2006 at 5:04 pm

    Sorry, got my tags wrong in the previous comment, here’s the post:
    http://brentblog.typepad.com/b....._netw.html

22. EJ Passeos
    

    August 4th, 2006 at 2:19 am

    I think this site could be exciting. The demos of Myspace means the 30 and up crowd have no place to go. Where is that sweet spot. Eons seems to have some preconceived notions on the older crowd (I’m 40), but may be their right.
    The obits don’t seem to harsh to me.

23. Dan Greenfield
    

    August 8th, 2006 at 2:08 pm

    At 43, I am ineligible for eons – a distinction I will covet for seven more years.

    It is hard to market to the Boomer generation because many Boomers are conflicted and do not want to identify with their age. Many companies market to this group, but don’t publicize their commitment. No one wants to be skewed as “too old.” Consequently, many business ventures serving this group can’t get financial backing or have folded due to a lack of advertising support.

    But I still think there is a real opportunity for the Boomer set to embrace social media.

    If you are interested in hearing more about my perspective, please check out my posting

24. nigel
    

    October 8th, 2006 at 3:50 pm

    Apparently none of you has been to Eureka Springs Arkansas, every weekend the town fill up with motorcycles….and they are all over 50 most appear to be in thier 60ties and they have thier biker babe mama on the back.

    I expect most of these folks have bucks and have the means to travel and mama is going with them.

    This weekend was the Corvette meet and guess what, no kids, no under 40 for the most part they were guys and gals in thier 50 and 60 years of age.

    Of course they have the bucks and the time.

    ohyeah. by the way I am 64, still stylish, still power walk, still golf , still play pool….and can outwork must anyone younger than me.

    So There!

    nigel

25. earthmotherstars
    

    October 13th, 2006 at 4:39 pm

    Its , A GOOD Idea , THERE are more then 10000 people that are in there 50ds and up , that work on line or talk to people on yahoo messenger
    care 2 .com ,,,, so please grow up,, YOU WILL GROW OLD TOO!!!

26. Queenie
    

    December 18th, 2006 at 8:50 am

    Have you actually BEEN to Eons.com? It is NOT user-friendly, navigating around the site is haphazard and sometimes, it even works. But not always. And quite frankly, IMO, Jeff is the WORST spokesman I’ve ever heard. I know I want to take advice from someone who isn’t even 50; yet he tells me this is the “boomer” place to be…and he would know that because?

    He looks like he’s drooling most of the time. Course, that could be from the moola he’s making off the site….

    I was not impressed, I was sorry I joined and spent my valuable time there, and left very disappointed with no plans to return.

    Strong message to follow…..

27. Jim
    

    January 20th, 2007 at 11:54 am

    Hello first thing I need to tell you is ( this is not a scam ) I am a 51 year old man and I am Disabled and I live with my wife and granddaughter I have been Disabled for 14 years I have severe rheumatic disease severe Fibromyalgia a Bad knee which makes me wear a leg brace and a degenerate disease in all my joints which makes it very hard to just get around I have to get help from my wife to do anything. We only have $800 a Month to live on to some that is a lot but with heating ,electric, phone and all the things it takes just to live it is not much and it just breaks my heart to have tell my granddaughter she cant have that candy bar or maybe you will get that doll for your birthday when I know it is not true we are frizzing in our own home we have very little money for anything else even food and I have no savings and I cant get any gov help because I make to much money for even food stamps so hear I am the only thing I know to do ask for your help if anyone could just send 5$ or just 1 or 2 $ it would sure help God bless you all Jim send money to 445 E P st. Atchison Ks 66002 again God Bless You All ( this is not a scam )

28. rednow
    

    March 11th, 2007 at 10:35 am

    jim
    I read your story and feel for you but there are many of us in some kind of dyer situations and just cant help you but wish you good luck i thought about mailing letters out to the extream wealthy because they have more than they need and thought maybe they wouldn’t mind giving me just a little but my wife said that 1 it was a stupid idea and 2 that they got theirs from their work why should they give it to me just because i choose a proffesion that didn’t pay 6figures or more god will take care just keep the faith

29. barnco5
    

    March 12th, 2007 at 10:24 pm

    Hi all anyone want to talk to a 62 yr old lady who loves fishing and camping