According to Charlene Yi, in Groundswell, recommended to me and AI by a friend, Wally Boston, the need for more and new ’Web 2.0’ platforms built to serve the older American demographic is questionable. With the wave of Boomer retirement still far from over - and online habits of the segment far from established - how can this be so?
Yi holds that there are a small number of “joiners,” “collectors,” “critics,” and “creators” in the older online population, as well as a relatively small number of spectators. Groundswell suggests that marketers in the senior care space would do well to court older Americans online using existing Web 2.0 platforms like Eons.com and Gather.com – over developing an independent platform.
The number of older Americans on the Internet is growing at a strong clip, and the growth in number and activity of seniors online will only accelerate in the coming years. Forrester research data, taken from Groundswell, indicates that 45% of older boomers (age 52-62) and 34% of seniors (age 63 and older) were using the Internet actively in the 2nd quarter of 2007. This data suggests that the number of seniors online is already accelerating – Pew research reported ~15% of seniors (65+) were online in 2000 and ~22% were in 2004.
At AI, we believe that the pitch battle for engagement of seniors online is far from won. While we are excited to see the growth of sites like Eons and Gather, as they improve the visibility of the category overall – as well as increase the propensity for seniors to interact online - we are especially enthusiastic about the prospects of freedomyears.com, a social networking site designed to develop community around healthy aging topics.
We know (from Pew research) that the majority of seniors online use the web to research healthcare topics, and we are confident that the combination of relevant, credible content from an array of partners, rich multimedia features from RLTV and useful functionality (stay tuned!) will make Freedomyears a compelling offering for older Americans on the web!
One last note… We have yet to see what the entrance of AARP, the 800 pound gorilla in senior marketing, will do to the social networking landscape? They've launched a social-network component to the redesigned aarp.org, but so far it seems to be just emerging from the starting line.