who’s it runned by, where?

their ‘about us’ page says nothing about the actual co.
same goes for their ‘contact us’ page.

any vc money went into starting this site up?
other costs, etc?

report with details, plz

Oh man, sweet, tell every boomer you know. Maybe we can get them all in one place by themselves. Dare to dream…

Lawrence i will ask Boomj for an interview to answer your questions.

I wrote about this here some time ago:

http://frostfirebuzz.com/boomj.....by-boomers

Having owned a Baby Boomer Startup in year 1999/2000 and being the first in Europe i can tell Boomj from experience the problem they will have is addressing the fact that this market simply do not want to be called Baby Boomers, Seniors, Pensioners, etc etc.

It will be interesting to see how they do. Boomj is a good site. Thirdage.com are the leaders in this market. They launched at about the same time as our startup in Europe. This was around the time when ivillage.com was setup. The female community market took off, but the Boomj market is notoriously difficult to crack, although a very wealthy market to tap into.

Chris @ http://www.frostfirebuzz.com

Interesting to see another social network for the boomer demographic - looks quite similar in scope to http://www.eons.com.

I don’t deny the significance of the boomers, especially given their huge disposable income as a group, but I question whether a network like this can hope for any serious traction. Most of the baby boomers I know (at least of those that are likely to get into social networking anytime soon) are already on Facebook. That said, as more and more reach retirement, offerings like Eons and Boomj could prosper.

I think that most niche social networking sites will fail. Probably Facebook and MySpace already have more “Boomers” that the sites mentioned above will ever have. I wouldn’t doubt if all of these niche sites end up being applications running off the APIs of the larger platforms.

Boomer are more online today than ever. They want to find deals,friends, and even companions. If this site is marketed well ,then I think it will be successful because it concentrates on a niche that has been overlooked. The real purpose of social network should be bring people together.

Here is the inside scoope on eons - it’s tanking, people are leaving in droves esp. since they missed their sales targets. Long term I believe niche social netowrks are going to fail because it’s too broad of a “niche”. I can see a social network of knitters working, but just because your a boomer? I’m skeptical.

Yet another one….this market is already crowded

@ Geoff - the boomers are on facebook? Come on……

Eons is here as is http://www.myboomerplace.com/ and others.
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
and probably more

(Third Age when Mary Furlong owned it was bought out & gutted by Ancestry).

When is Oprah”s SN going to launch? Or Michael Bloomberg’s? Or NPR’s?

niche…..niche….niche

The web is the network, not facebook.

@ Amy

Yes. I mentioned Facebook because a number of my friends’ parents have recently joined. Whether or not boomers will join en masse is another issue altogether.

50 year olds will want to network online in exactly (50 - ) years.

(50 - [your age]) years

Might need to consider changing the name. It’s too Web 2.0.

I think a big point is being ignored here: this is not just another site for Boomers, this is the first big site for Boomers and Generation Jones, and that is a huge distinction.

Generation Jones (the long-lost generation between the Boomers and Xers, born 1954-1965, 26% of all U.S. adults) has been receiving huge media attention in Western Europe, and now increasingly in the U.S. 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 in business and politics.

What I see as amost significant in this new BOOMj site is that it is taking the offline buzz and interest in GenJones and giving it a home online. If BOOMj succeeds, I’d bet it will be largely because of their seperating Jonesers from Boomers.

This guy clearly didnt do his research. The founder of Monster.com founded Eons.com to hit this exact same market. Nonetheless, i thought it was a bad idea even when he came out with it. I really hope this doesn’t get funding as 99% of the reason for another potential tech crash will be due to social network sites. The only social sites I see any hope for and am actually excited for are the Google and Yahoo mashups that I can check all of my two networks (facebook and myspace) in one place so I dont have to check both? Damn, I didnt realize that it was such a tough step to sign in to two different sites. Get lost Boom J

-1daysports.com

Well, I am in the demo at age 58.
Boomj is too childlike for me. Full of annoying advertising (well, not after judicious application of AdBlockPlus).
I prefer http://www.myplanafter50.com/ and its serious focus.

Eons.com is a social networking site, all of the other BOOMer related social networking sites are going to fall short because they are not on the same level as BOOMj.

With BOOMj they offer a complete ecommerce package with over 1.2 million sku’s. With baby boomers being the majority of online spending and the growing need to feel “connected” online makes BOOMj a perfect fit for this demographic.

If that wasnt enough BOOMj also is an online portal with news on 7 of the main verticals that baby boomers and generation jones look for when online.

The fact that generation jones (normally considered baby boomers) NOW have a place online as well makes BOOMj the leading site and the best site from what I have seen within this particular niche.

Lets be honest, a baby boomer on myspace to me seems like he might end up on date line with chris hansen. Thats just the vibe it gives off to me. Myspace (however growing number of boomers using it) is a place for young people, even the ads are targeted to that demo.

With boomj even the ads are targeted for that demographic.

BtW, I did not see many ads on this site. NO more then myspace and probably less then them.

I’ve been doing something hands-on research on “Boomer” sites and have come to the conclusion that 99% of them are just marketing hype.

The proof is that they don’t adhere to the true definition of a Boomer. The age category that I’ve used is between 1946 and 1965.

Boomj allows people of ANY age to join. Lavalife also has jumped on the bandwagon with their Boomers dating site, prime.lavalife.com. Lavalife Prime’s marketing copy on their site is “Meet Singles 45+”. Now this is clearly a LIE because they allow people who are 40 and over!

EONS is the only site where you must be 50+ in order to join! However, from a usability perspective why even display and allow people to choose birth years prior to 1957?

I am in no way associated with EONS or am I here to promote them. I’m just laying out the facts. Companies have a right to capitalize on plum market segments/niches, but come on – don’t be so blatant about your greed. You won’t win anyway. I myself am not a Boomer (Gen Y) but even I get that you don’t really care about your members. OOP’s, sorry to be politically correct, your “community”

BTW, I like Chris’ definition of Baby Boomers and Generation Jones

Beth Gen Y!

This is a great audience, the holy grail perhaps, to aggregate on the web (affluent, high spenders, active), and many have and are trying (www.tbd.com) The major challenge I see in targeting boomers is that the audience is already dispersed across the web and in the physical world, not by demographic clustering, but by psychographic clustering, e.g. lifestyles, attitudes, beliefs, values, personality, products, etc. And it is a fallacy, I believe, to think that because boomers are online already, on MySpace, on Facebook, etc, that they can easily be redirected to a place offering ways to connect with their own demographic. The reason so many are on these services is that I believe they more often identify more with other psychographic peers on these services that have similar interests, rather than their demographic ones. For instance, my father -in-law probably has more in common with me with regard to his love of technology and tech investing, than most of his peers, so he feels more comfortable on Facebook as a part of the web 2.0 investor or entrepreneur group than on a boomer site. It is a challenge very similar to the challenge we faced at my previous company trying to aggregate the small business owner. And the lesson learned….hold onto your wallet and your breath when evaluating your marketing metrics. And if anyone can or has figured it out, please call me. I’ll pay for the call.

Wow, lots of negativity towards Boomj! Minus all that, I think it would make for an interesting project to follow the sites growth assuming it does catch on as well on the ROI’s for its advertisers.

I totally agree with those above who emphasize the value of Generation Jones to this BOOMj site. I’ve known about Generation Jones for awhile now, and I, as well as my comparably-aged friends, are generally very into being members of Generation Jones. It’s a cool sounding name, the birth years seem right, and we have no doubt that WE ARE NOT BOOMERS!!!!! Thank you BOOMj for finally giving us Jonesers a place to hang. EONS, BOOMERTOWNE, and the rest made a big mistake lumping us Jonesers in with Boomers. A year from now looking back, BOOMj will owe much of its success to the fact that they recognized us Jonesers, and gave us content specific to us.

@Bill do you work for them? That’s the nicest bit of promotion I’ve seen for a site in a long time without having some personal stake. Can I hire you to spin for my company?

Frankly I see Eons as less of a social networking site (although they try, bless their hearts) and more of content portal. Or at least that’s what they want to be. The social element (as probably for BoomJ) is to be viral in order to get them to get their friends involved - nothing wrong with that. And yes they tagged their marketing as “myspace for boomers” (just do a search and see how many PR hits come up for them) but their push is all about selling trips, insurance, advice, services etc. - ie much more emphasis/ content laden than people interaction.

Can’t be all things to all people, and Boomers and whatever GenJ is (first I’d ever heard that term, and I’ve been paying a lot of attention to this space over the past year) are as diversified as anyone.

We’ll see. Just seems a bit more juvenile-looking than adult looking though.

I’m a Joneser who belongs to a number of online communities, and far more rl communities. None of the many boomers I know who go online for research or airline bookings would get this as their equivalent of Facebook or MySpace or anything more than a passtime for those who are isolated or bored. My first visceral reactions were that it feels like a dating site and there’s no there there. My first thought was… how does even a small demographic, let alone a huge one, make a community?

i enjoy the breathtaking stupidity of most posters here

BeingParents may just top the list

gotta wait for the dust to settle on niche social networks…my gut says that the sites which can quickly generate big numbers have a decent chance at hitting hime runs…generation jones angle is strong hook for boomj, jones hook is only real differnetiator i see here…we aint seen nothin yet with hiw niched the social network universe is going to get…

I’m a baby boomer. I don’t give a damn about networking by age. Nobody’s ever impressed me because of their age except for very new and very old humans.

By the way, we didn’t just stop at Vietnam or flower power or whatever bullshit you picked up from tv. We’re still here and the story of our early years is rarely told with any insight in the mass media junk folks take for reality.

The Generation Jones idea is interesting. That would be my generation except I’ve never heard of it before.

In any case, I network now for the future, not for the past.

I like this Generation Jones concept:

“Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Steve Case all come from this generation.”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15592086/

Hell, yeah! Add Dave Winer to that list. We may be a bunch of cranks but we got some things done.

We also invented hip hop and shared the invention of punk rock with baby boomers like the Ramones. Take those flowers and choke on ‘em, twitches!

But you kids have done alright for yourselves with what us old folks, preboomers, boomers and jonesers, have provided. You may not have invented the internet or blogging but you did come up with Friendster and ringtones!!!

@clyde, you got some issues, old timer.

The baby boomer demographic is such a tempting target. We boomers do have a lot in common but I am very skeptical that a “be-everything to everyone” kind of site will live up to the marketing dream. I am going along with the opinions expressed here that niche sites (like my own, http://www.topretirements.com) are the way to appeal to this big group. If i want music, i’ll go to a music site, ditto for videos and financial advice. And BTW, i don’t mind being called a baby boomer (we’ve had a fun ride, but lets not take ourselves too seriously).

@bdb - You don’t know the half of it Mr. “I’m too scared to identify myself in public for some unidentfiable reason”

Scared of your boomer boss or what?

But of course I have issues. And I take issue with superficial generalizations of any group. I tried to put it in humorous mode but you see the thanks I get for attempting to communicate across generational/consciousness divides.

At this point I’m just entertaining myself anyway. I’ve given up on trying to be a positive influence on young people.

Sure generating unusual amounts of traffic to my blog. The stats must be accurate!

I bet this is a half-baked initiative on behalf of myspace to get all the creepy old guys and cougars to leave myspace. If it works, I commend them.

What about the site boomertowne.com? They launched around April and keep adding on to the site. Recently they added a (FREE) dating section, points program, and a cool thing that allows you to report and learn about cities around the country. Great site. http://www.boomertowne.com

yeah, but boomertowne doesn’t differentiate generation jonesers from baby boomers, which is a big mistake…as i watch the generation jones meme spread through the culture at large, i’m convinced that it’s on the brink of exploding, and the “boomer” sites which don’t seperate jones from boom will be scrambling to catch up…boomj’s site isnt very strong yet, not enough content specific to boom and jones, but they have a big competitive advantage by making jones integral to their site…

There are also some sites that cater to niche groups and start small such as MyCircles.com, but have ambitions to grow into large portals with different content that caters to the niche groups it targets.

MyCircles.com for instance has niche groups for Bikers, Tattoos, Kosher, Asians, Hispanics, Ebony, Gay, Bisexual, Swingers, Fetishes and alternative lifestyles all at the same site.