September 15, 2008
Social Networking Sites Attracting Boomers
By Tom Ryan
According to survey from The NPD Group, social networking sites used by teenagers and young adults are increasingly being adopted by baby boomers. The study, Entertainment Trends in America, found 41 percent of baby boomers have visited social networks such as MySpace or Facebook, and 61 percent have been to sites with streaming or downloadable video such as YouTube.
The study, which surveyed 11,600 consumers online, found that over 57 percent of web users overall have stopped at social networking sites in the past three months. Baby boomers stopped an average of eight times in that period.
“Overall, these sites offer a great opportunity to marketers at many age levels, but the boomer visits are really a surprise,” Russ Crupnick, NPD’s entertainment industry analyst told Adweek. “These things may be targeted to a younger audience, but as we are seeing, there are more older people who enjoy these services.”
Nonetheless, the older generation is using social networking sites differently than younger generations. A Forrester study conducted earlier this year found that 41 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds leave comments or create content on social networking sites; only 14 percent of those 55 and over use the sites for the same purpose.
“It tells me that younger consumers want to engage, while older [consumers] are there for information. Which is a good place for any marketer to be,” said Jeremiah Owyang, senior analyst at Forrester Research.
BMW, whose average customer is in their mid-forties, earlier this year used Facebook as a medium to promote its new 1-Series. But the Adweek article asserted that most brands had done a poor job of making themselves known to older consumers on social websites.
“What we’ve found is that technology, media and consumer goods are doing a good job of marketing, overall, in social networks,” said Mr. Owyang. “Everyone else is failing.”
Discussion Questions: What’s the likelihood that traditionally youth-oriented sites such as MySpace and Facebook will become major avenues to reach Baby Boomers? How are Baby Boomers using social networking websites differently than younger generations? What challenges will that present in reaching them?
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As a boomer who uses these social sites, I don’t see it happening. As the studies show, we spend a lot less time on these sites and are not nearly as engaged. You’re much more likely to reach me on cnn.com or espn.com than Facebook.
I also believe that these sites will never become that popular with boomers. Right now, I use them for business but I always find it a little strange when I’m asked how I know someone “hooked-up” is one of the options. I’m sorry to say that hooked-up nowadays means you got me a client or a product sample!
Yet another example of how the differences between generations is evaporating. The real truth of the matter is that different generations learn from each other and over a period of time, the differences get smaller and smaller. Just as the article suggested, baby boomers, matures and Xers are all embracing new ways to communicate and gather information.
If you want to take a look at one of the fastest growing sites on the web go to http://www.ning.com. There you can build your own community and join others that are already there. Right now I have my own community at http://www.melkleiman.com and belong to 5 others that are made up of groups of people that share some type of common interest, from recruiting to cars.
Web 2.0 is where it’s heading, no matter what age your are.
Old folks can’t erase
The power of MySpace.
So Boomers will arise,
Find their own web prize,
One for their own comprise
Before dementia and demise.
The social networking sites provide a way to easily target users on many demographic and psycho-sociographic levels. It matters not the degree with which Baby Boomers participate, what matters is that those who participate will be efficiently targeted. If so, this venue will dramatically grow in use by advertisers.
The fact that Baby Boomers have been slow to adopt these social networking sites is not surprising. Baby Boomers have been slower than younger folks to adapt to the electronic communication age. However, they eventually adopt and participate at a very high level.
In addition, social networking sites will find ways to encourage baby boomers who as the years go by, will have more and more time on their hands to enjoy the connections of MySpace, Facebook and others.
First, you have to correctly define boomer. Baby Boomers are currently 46-62 (1946-1960). As a baby boomer myself, I’m tired of seeing baby boomers portrayed as 55+ and senior citizens.
Many older people have gotten into social networking through their kids, through their careers or just because they’re tuned in and know that age is just a number. You can’t stereotype people. Social networking is everywhere, whether it’s MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Classmates.com, Twitter, Evite or blogging.
Perhaps the Baby Boomer making the best use of social networking is Barack Obama. Yes, folks, he’s a baby boomer (born in 1961), though he is at the back end of the generation.
I think we’re just seeing the start of adoption of Facebook and other social sites by older users. Some sites, MySpace perhaps among them, are too youth-oriented and not likely to attract older users, but others, like Facebook will take off. Business oriented sites like LinkedIn have introduced older users to the social networking concept, and they will participate in others, especially if they feel like they should have a “work/personal” separation among sites.
Social networking, IMHO, is the latest incarnation of the original “killer app” of the Internet: virtual community. For over 20 years, the draw of the Internet and predecessor online services was the opportunity to connect with others with similar interests that you would otherwise never meet. After a detour into a “content is king” era where traditional “push” media models reigned, we’re returning to the connected world of online services. New technologies have made it easier and more interesting to connect online.
Expect to see social networking services become far more pervasive, with staying power. I think people will participate in at least one service, along with an email address, as an essential way to stay connected with friends and colleagues.
It is possible that marketing on social networking sites may have a greater impact/impression on the older boomer generation.
If younger social networking participants interact and engage in a way that is geared towards speed and breadth and if a boomer’s engagement is more deliberate with deeper looks into these sites’ content then it is seemingly possible that the targeted marketing could have a greater impact on this second group.
I also believe that younger internet users are somewhat immune to online advertising by virtue of the speed with which they navigate the net and the sites which interest them. Older users who may have more time on their hands and are less comfortable navigating the net may likely spend more time on fewer sites which enables greater numbers of impressions by advertisers.
All of this is of course pure speculation, since I have seen nothing statistical to support my conjectures.
There some to be some significant assumptions showing up in the story (though maybe they are dealt with more thoroughly in the research). For example, the assumption that Boomers are visiting the social networking sites for “information.” In a very broad sense, anything can qualify as information, so that may be correct. But, checking on what your child is doing on these sites, clicking on links that take you to YouTube videos (which you may not realize until you get there), and other similar visits are not the same as actively going to the site as a destination for specific information.
Almost any site will pull an age distribution of users (LinkedIn will have 20 somethings just like MySpace will have 50 somethings), but I doubt that Boomers will suddenly become big users of Facebook or MySpace. Should marketers be aware of these sites as potential channels and use them appropriately? Yes. Are these sites the next holy grail of advertising distribution for all ages? No.
Content is still king. Boomers go to the social sites for reasons just like others go there for reasons. Although the reasons may be prioritized differently–they are not all that different.
Curiosity?
Articles such as this?
To find out what their kids are doing?
Because their friends are there?
Once the information is there and accessible, we’ll show up and we’ll come back. Will we come FOR blatant marketing messages disguised as social conversation? NO. We will come in spite of them to some degree, but they are worse than paid advertising because they are intrusive and without permission and those who use them that way will be exposed and will earn what they deserve.
It’s supposed to be SOCIAL networking whether for business or personal use, but not for advertiser supported PR, which is different than the ads on the social sites.
I wonder how many social network sites people will tolerate, or will be effective. It’s not practical to keep up with a bunch of those and still be productive socially or otherwise. The better mousetraps in function and content will earn their way.
Social Networking sites are opening the door to providing brand intimacy with consumers, and cohort groups. The difference with Boomers is how they use the sites, versus younger generational cohorts. LinkedIn obviously has tapped into core motivators for Boomers in the space: career networking.
Boomers, unlike Millennials, have established ways of offline social networking using older technologies (simple phone call). This means that the “new” way must provide advantages and critical mass of cohorts to make the new behavior worthwhile. Millennials aren’t saddled with legacy behaviors; they are game for new communications methods that don’t require “justification” or a behavioral change.
In terms of the sites themselves, Boomers want to be assured that there are other people on the site that they want to connect with (and have a reason for doing so). Facebook is the site for their kids. LinkedIn is for them. Will other sites emerge that truly capture the Boomer audience? Sure. Gather.com is one.
But I believe that Boomers are also conditioned to work through familiar brands and companies in a way that their younger counterparts aren’t. This means that they are ripe for bigger brands to sponsor relevant sites, which can provide commercial/financial benefits as well.
While the numbers speak for themselves, the challenge, as always, is how marketers set themselves up to use the data and the medium that social networks present. I would disagree with the article’s assessment that many marketers are effectively using the medium today, other than as a pure advertising medium (albeit a potentially well targeted one).
The real opportunity is to identify customers who advocate and identify with your brand through these social media. There is ample evidence of social network participants doing so though very little that marketers have done to identify, engage and recognize these customers.
One exception worth noting is what Cameron Hughes Wines is doing on Twitter. They are sending Twitter-exclusive offers to their followers. (It’s great wine too.)
I’m not sure that social networking sites like Facebook will catch on with boomers and so on, because they are really targeted to a younger audience. However, the idea behind social networking will absolutely spread to an older demographic. You can already see it happening with career-oriented networks like LinkedIn and Plaxo, and the concept will gain traction in other areas of interest like health, travel, and so on. This is another great medium exploding before our eyes.
It all depends on who you are and what you do. Most of the Boomer artists I share studio space with in an aging industrial complex in Detroit have at least one MySpace account–many two, three or four! These individuals define themselves by their activities and their audience, which, in the case of the arts, tends to be younger. This weekend we had to postpone an outdoor air festival. We had 160 artists and 42 bands booked. Between MySpace and FaceBook we were in touch with almost 90 percent of them within three hours. Not sure how this all translates to the “business” world but when the business is art, it’s hard to argue with the effectiveness of these sites.
The important number is frequency of visits. Many 16-30 year olds visit their Facebook and/or MySpace pages every day. It has become a primary tool in their communications network, providing both a way to communicate and a means to gather social information. It is a datebook, a Rolodex and a gossip sheet.
Boomers use social networks to gather information, stay in touch (see what friends are doing) and trade information (such as sharing photos). Boomers also value their privacy more, and as such, are not as willing to post personal details on an ongoing basis.
Advertisers need to study how different demographic and socio-economic segments use social networks. So far, no advertisers have really discovered how to use social networks, which is why, despite their high market values, Fox and Facebook have not yet realized great monetary gain.
Facebook has become a critical method of communication for many, especially here in Canada. Many groups and associations use it to convey important information and events. It is unreal how Facebook has become the ‘source’ for the latest info. Now if I need to know what I am doing Saturday night, I can just check on Facebook instead of asking my wife. Marketing on these sites is like shooting fish in a barrel!
It sounds to me as if it depends on the boomer and the group that boomer runs with. For my part, I’m in a field that has its own vibrant social network, AdGabber, where I spend a lot of time when there’s a lot going on with my particular friends and where I don’t especially if my friends aren’t around.
Then, of course, there’s LinkedIn, where I do check in pretty regularly. Again, it depends on what my friends are doing.
I don’t feel comfortable on Facebook, mostly because I feel like that’s where my kids are, and my daughter warned me away from her and her friends years ago. Now that she’s in college, I may see if she’s open to friending–we sure spend enough time on IM–but my guess is she doesn’t want to have mom chats on FB in front of her friends, even if she’s supposedly an adult now.
So…how does all that relate to social networks as a marketing tool?
Two years ago I was involved in a product intro/bootstrap where I thought the prototype brand definitely needed a MySpace page. I think I would say the same thing today about a mass-market, high-fashion item; I think of FB as being more of a private-school and college destination, and I know that’s not true anymore. So I’d have to get educated and look at real numbers before making any kind of intelligent decision.
What gets interesting is applying this stuff to actual products–for example, financial services. LinkedIn would be a no-brainer. AdGabber and other professional networks–maybe some of the other ones on Ning–might be good choices too. But I would approach MySpace and FB gingerly unless they had a way to serve only selected user segments, and then I would look at behavioral/contextual placement, serving ads or other sponsored content only when a user was searching for or clicking on relevant information. And I’m not even sure the algorithms are that sophisticated…are they?
Hey retailers: you can use brick and mortar locations to enhance customer social networking. No computer programs needed. Walmart won’t let its stores do this, so the #1 competitor for everything won’t hurt you. Try singles nights, gay/lesbian nights, and nights for various age/interest groups. Michael’s crafts lessons = social networking and the customers have to buy tickets (and merchandise to enjoy the lessons.) Very few restaurants, hotels, or bars organize wine/beer/whiskey tastings. Very few dealers organize car buff shows. Home Depot does demos and lessons. How many Ace stores do that?
Absolutely. Boomers are famous for creating their own niches with existing “societies” without being concerned about how others view that. As various physical inconveniences make face time somewhat more difficult, Boomers increasingly will turn to networking to stay “active,” in touch and in tune.
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As a boomer who uses these social sites, I don’t see it happening. As the studies show, we spend a lot less time on these sites and are not nearly as engaged. You’re much more likely to reach me on cnn.com or espn.com than Facebook.
I also believe that these sites will never become that popular with boomers. Right now, I use them for business but I always find it a little strange when I’m asked how I know someone “hooked-up” is one of the options. I’m sorry to say that hooked-up nowadays means you got me a client or a product sample!
Yet another example of how the differences between generations is evaporating. The real truth of the matter is that different generations learn from each other and over a period of time, the differences get smaller and smaller. Just as the article suggested, baby boomers, matures and Xers are all embracing new ways to communicate and gather information.
If you want to take a look at one of the fastest growing sites on the web go to http://www.ning.com. There you can build your own community and join others that are already there. Right now I have my own community at http://www.melkleiman.com and belong to 5 others that are made up of groups of people that share some type of common interest, from recruiting to cars.
Web 2.0 is where it’s heading, no matter what age your are.
Old folks can’t erase
The power of MySpace.
So Boomers will arise,
Find their own web prize,
One for their own comprise
Before dementia and demise.
The social networking sites provide a way to easily target users on many demographic and psycho-sociographic levels. It matters not the degree with which Baby Boomers participate, what matters is that those who participate will be efficiently targeted. If so, this venue will dramatically grow in use by advertisers.
The fact that Baby Boomers have been slow to adopt these social networking sites is not surprising. Baby Boomers have been slower than younger folks to adapt to the electronic communication age. However, they eventually adopt and participate at a very high level.
In addition, social networking sites will find ways to encourage baby boomers who as the years go by, will have more and more time on their hands to enjoy the connections of MySpace, Facebook and others.
First, you have to correctly define boomer. Baby Boomers are currently 46-62 (1946-1960). As a baby boomer myself, I’m tired of seeing baby boomers portrayed as 55+ and senior citizens.
Many older people have gotten into social networking through their kids, through their careers or just because they’re tuned in and know that age is just a number. You can’t stereotype people. Social networking is everywhere, whether it’s MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Classmates.com, Twitter, Evite or blogging.
Perhaps the Baby Boomer making the best use of social networking is Barack Obama. Yes, folks, he’s a baby boomer (born in 1961), though he is at the back end of the generation.
I think we’re just seeing the start of adoption of Facebook and other social sites by older users. Some sites, MySpace perhaps among them, are too youth-oriented and not likely to attract older users, but others, like Facebook will take off. Business oriented sites like LinkedIn have introduced older users to the social networking concept, and they will participate in others, especially if they feel like they should have a “work/personal” separation among sites.
Social networking, IMHO, is the latest incarnation of the original “killer app” of the Internet: virtual community. For over 20 years, the draw of the Internet and predecessor online services was the opportunity to connect with others with similar interests that you would otherwise never meet. After a detour into a “content is king” era where traditional “push” media models reigned, we’re returning to the connected world of online services. New technologies have made it easier and more interesting to connect online.
Expect to see social networking services become far more pervasive, with staying power. I think people will participate in at least one service, along with an email address, as an essential way to stay connected with friends and colleagues.
It is possible that marketing on social networking sites may have a greater impact/impression on the older boomer generation.
If younger social networking participants interact and engage in a way that is geared towards speed and breadth and if a boomer’s engagement is more deliberate with deeper looks into these sites’ content then it is seemingly possible that the targeted marketing could have a greater impact on this second group.
I also believe that younger internet users are somewhat immune to online advertising by virtue of the speed with which they navigate the net and the sites which interest them. Older users who may have more time on their hands and are less comfortable navigating the net may likely spend more time on fewer sites which enables greater numbers of impressions by advertisers.
All of this is of course pure speculation, since I have seen nothing statistical to support my conjectures.
There some to be some significant assumptions showing up in the story (though maybe they are dealt with more thoroughly in the research). For example, the assumption that Boomers are visiting the social networking sites for “information.” In a very broad sense, anything can qualify as information, so that may be correct. But, checking on what your child is doing on these sites, clicking on links that take you to YouTube videos (which you may not realize until you get there), and other similar visits are not the same as actively going to the site as a destination for specific information.
Almost any site will pull an age distribution of users (LinkedIn will have 20 somethings just like MySpace will have 50 somethings), but I doubt that Boomers will suddenly become big users of Facebook or MySpace. Should marketers be aware of these sites as potential channels and use them appropriately? Yes. Are these sites the next holy grail of advertising distribution for all ages? No.
Content is still king. Boomers go to the social sites for reasons just like others go there for reasons. Although the reasons may be prioritized differently–they are not all that different.
Curiosity?
Articles such as this?
To find out what their kids are doing?
Because their friends are there?
Once the information is there and accessible, we’ll show up and we’ll come back. Will we come FOR blatant marketing messages disguised as social conversation? NO. We will come in spite of them to some degree, but they are worse than paid advertising because they are intrusive and without permission and those who use them that way will be exposed and will earn what they deserve.
It’s supposed to be SOCIAL networking whether for business or personal use, but not for advertiser supported PR, which is different than the ads on the social sites.
I wonder how many social network sites people will tolerate, or will be effective. It’s not practical to keep up with a bunch of those and still be productive socially or otherwise. The better mousetraps in function and content will earn their way.
Social Networking sites are opening the door to providing brand intimacy with consumers, and cohort groups. The difference with Boomers is how they use the sites, versus younger generational cohorts. LinkedIn obviously has tapped into core motivators for Boomers in the space: career networking.
Boomers, unlike Millennials, have established ways of offline social networking using older technologies (simple phone call). This means that the “new” way must provide advantages and critical mass of cohorts to make the new behavior worthwhile. Millennials aren’t saddled with legacy behaviors; they are game for new communications methods that don’t require “justification” or a behavioral change.
In terms of the sites themselves, Boomers want to be assured that there are other people on the site that they want to connect with (and have a reason for doing so). Facebook is the site for their kids. LinkedIn is for them. Will other sites emerge that truly capture the Boomer audience? Sure. Gather.com is one.
But I believe that Boomers are also conditioned to work through familiar brands and companies in a way that their younger counterparts aren’t. This means that they are ripe for bigger brands to sponsor relevant sites, which can provide commercial/financial benefits as well.
While the numbers speak for themselves, the challenge, as always, is how marketers set themselves up to use the data and the medium that social networks present. I would disagree with the article’s assessment that many marketers are effectively using the medium today, other than as a pure advertising medium (albeit a potentially well targeted one).
The real opportunity is to identify customers who advocate and identify with your brand through these social media. There is ample evidence of social network participants doing so though very little that marketers have done to identify, engage and recognize these customers.
One exception worth noting is what Cameron Hughes Wines is doing on Twitter. They are sending Twitter-exclusive offers to their followers. (It’s great wine too.)
I’m not sure that social networking sites like Facebook will catch on with boomers and so on, because they are really targeted to a younger audience. However, the idea behind social networking will absolutely spread to an older demographic. You can already see it happening with career-oriented networks like LinkedIn and Plaxo, and the concept will gain traction in other areas of interest like health, travel, and so on. This is another great medium exploding before our eyes.
It all depends on who you are and what you do. Most of the Boomer artists I share studio space with in an aging industrial complex in Detroit have at least one MySpace account–many two, three or four! These individuals define themselves by their activities and their audience, which, in the case of the arts, tends to be younger. This weekend we had to postpone an outdoor air festival. We had 160 artists and 42 bands booked. Between MySpace and FaceBook we were in touch with almost 90 percent of them within three hours. Not sure how this all translates to the “business” world but when the business is art, it’s hard to argue with the effectiveness of these sites.
The important number is frequency of visits. Many 16-30 year olds visit their Facebook and/or MySpace pages every day. It has become a primary tool in their communications network, providing both a way to communicate and a means to gather social information. It is a datebook, a Rolodex and a gossip sheet.
Boomers use social networks to gather information, stay in touch (see what friends are doing) and trade information (such as sharing photos). Boomers also value their privacy more, and as such, are not as willing to post personal details on an ongoing basis.
Advertisers need to study how different demographic and socio-economic segments use social networks. So far, no advertisers have really discovered how to use social networks, which is why, despite their high market values, Fox and Facebook have not yet realized great monetary gain.
Facebook has become a critical method of communication for many, especially here in Canada. Many groups and associations use it to convey important information and events. It is unreal how Facebook has become the ‘source’ for the latest info. Now if I need to know what I am doing Saturday night, I can just check on Facebook instead of asking my wife. Marketing on these sites is like shooting fish in a barrel!
It sounds to me as if it depends on the boomer and the group that boomer runs with. For my part, I’m in a field that has its own vibrant social network, AdGabber, where I spend a lot of time when there’s a lot going on with my particular friends and where I don’t especially if my friends aren’t around.
Then, of course, there’s LinkedIn, where I do check in pretty regularly. Again, it depends on what my friends are doing.
I don’t feel comfortable on Facebook, mostly because I feel like that’s where my kids are, and my daughter warned me away from her and her friends years ago. Now that she’s in college, I may see if she’s open to friending–we sure spend enough time on IM–but my guess is she doesn’t want to have mom chats on FB in front of her friends, even if she’s supposedly an adult now.
So…how does all that relate to social networks as a marketing tool?
Two years ago I was involved in a product intro/bootstrap where I thought the prototype brand definitely needed a MySpace page. I think I would say the same thing today about a mass-market, high-fashion item; I think of FB as being more of a private-school and college destination, and I know that’s not true anymore. So I’d have to get educated and look at real numbers before making any kind of intelligent decision.
What gets interesting is applying this stuff to actual products–for example, financial services. LinkedIn would be a no-brainer. AdGabber and other professional networks–maybe some of the other ones on Ning–might be good choices too. But I would approach MySpace and FB gingerly unless they had a way to serve only selected user segments, and then I would look at behavioral/contextual placement, serving ads or other sponsored content only when a user was searching for or clicking on relevant information. And I’m not even sure the algorithms are that sophisticated…are they?
Hey retailers: you can use brick and mortar locations to enhance customer social networking. No computer programs needed. Walmart won’t let its stores do this, so the #1 competitor for everything won’t hurt you. Try singles nights, gay/lesbian nights, and nights for various age/interest groups. Michael’s crafts lessons = social networking and the customers have to buy tickets (and merchandise to enjoy the lessons.) Very few restaurants, hotels, or bars organize wine/beer/whiskey tastings. Very few dealers organize car buff shows. Home Depot does demos and lessons. How many Ace stores do that?
Absolutely. Boomers are famous for creating their own niches with existing “societies” without being concerned about how others view that. As various physical inconveniences make face time somewhat more difficult, Boomers increasingly will turn to networking to stay “active,” in touch and in tune.