Some commentators were amazed when Saga announced the launch of its social networking site for the over 50s. They were even more taken aback when 13,000 users signed up for the trial, the oldest being 87. They shouldn’t have been.

Those of us working in the Social Media field weren’t surprised. To us, it seems logical that the social networking trend should sweep away the over 50s, just as it did the under 35s. The way we see it, before long all of us, young and old, could be creating mashups and microblogging* across the generation gap.

People who think that Social Media is only for youngsters, that the over 35s don’t have the skills, time and inclination to get involved, are just plain wrong. It’s true that the ultra-connected are likely to be in the under 35 age bracket but there is plenty of evidence that their elders are not lagging far behind.

Recent figures from Ofcom, the communications regulator, showed that about 16% of over-65s use the internet and the over-50s account for nearly one third of the total time spent on the internet in Britain.

Those statistics are likely to soar as, day by day, Social Media gets more user friendly. Applications such as Dapper, Yahoo! Pipes and Robomaker allow your average silver surfer to do things online that a competent programmer would have found taxing a few years ago, while microblogs like twitter, jaiku and pownce make communication easier and cheaper.

At the same time, Social Media is emulating the real world. Facebook is a good example. Even those who are culturally unfamiliar with the ‘geekosphere’ feel at home there. In fact, the over 35s are the fastest growing Facebook demographic.

And because Social Media knows where the money is, it can tailor itself to suit the market. Sites like NetMums and LinkedIn are aimed squarely at users whose first priority isn’t leisure.

All good reasons why marketers chasing the lucrative ‘grey pound’ market should make Social Media a central part of their marketing mix.

*A mashup (the term comes from hip hop) is an application that mixes services from different sites, such as traffic data overlaid on a map. Microblogging allows users to write text updates by a variety of means, including text messaging, instant messaging, email, MP3 or the web. Microblogs and their sms support have real potential for businesses.

PAGE TOP

     What are these?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 20th, 2008 at 5:08 pm and is filed under Comment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.