Do Boomers Want a Web Home of Their Own?

Baby boomers are the largest, wealthiest target ever defined by American marketers.

By RANDALL STROSS
The New York Times

THE 78 million baby boomers born between 1946 and 1964 are the largest, wealthiest, most tantalizing target ever defined by American marketers. No one seems certain of the boomers’ annual disposable income, but figures loosely bandied about range from $1 trillion to $2 trillion.

These boomers, however, have become rather shy about their identity, and no Internet media company or social network has figured out how to grow big by dedicating its attention solely to them. For this Hope-I-Die-Before-I-Get-Old generation, the sensitive issue of age must somehow be finessed.

Eons, a tiny two-year-old company based in Boston, is one of several contestants aiming to become the pre-eminent Web destination for boomers. Its inaugural message — “Living the biggest life possible!”— has not visibly succeeded, and it is scrambling to redefine its offerings and identity. Its struggles are of interest because it is an unusually well-financed little company, with $32 million in venture capital, and because one of its backers is Michael Moritz, a venture capitalist at Sequoia Capital whose early-stage investments include Yahoo and Google.

The founder and chief executive of Eons is Jeff Taylor, a boomer born in 1960; in 1993, he founded Monster, the job listings site. He left Monster in 2005 to set up Eons, which he conceived as a site for “celebrating life on the flip side of 50.”

In a commercial filmed in 2006, Mr. Taylor was the very embodiment of pep: “It’s about being proud of being over 50,” he says to the camera, a premature declaration from a 46-year-old who had the appearance of someone closer to 40. He was also enormously fond of another tag line for his company that includes a word rarely found in marketing: “die.” (“Let’s live to be 100 or die trying!”)

Eons tried to define a distinctive identity with a velvet rope that restricted access. It barred anyone under 50 from joining. Those who were 49 were permitted to “sneak in,” and anyone younger was put on a waiting list. That was supposed to create such cachet that prospective members would kick themselves for the misfortune of being too young.

When I spoke with Mr. Taylor by phone this month, I asked him why he had set the minimum age at 50 — which meant that he himself could not join. He said, “Madison Avenue seemed to be interested in 18- to 49-year-olds, yet there are 49 million people over 50 that are on the Internet.”

The expression “50 is the new 30” had also become a part of popular culture. He wanted to offer people in their 40s a reason to look forward to that milestone. He said that as he neared 50, he didn’t want his “entire excitement to be having two of my friends sign me up for AARP as a joke.”

When Eons was introduced in July 2006, it offered pages and pages of information on personal finance, relationships, health and fitness — all tailored for visitors who were 50-plus. Other features included a Longevity Calculator, Brain Games, a search engine that produced “age relevant” listings, and an obituaries section. The company’s staff, whose numbers would swell to 65, conducted surveys and published reports, like one on sex that offered advice (“Top Five Tips For Getting More After 50”).

In early 2007, traffic data seemed to suggest that Eons had found the key to attracting boomers. But then its visitors all but disappeared. According to comScore Media Metrix, Eons attracted almost 1.2 million unique visitors in May 2007, but by December, the visitor tally had fallen to 285,000. What happened?

The earlier increase in traffic had been obtained by unsustainable means, Mr. Taylor explained. Eons had secured traffic by buying advertising rights to keywords on Google and other search engines. At one point, it bought 26,000 phrases — like “retirement living Chicago,” “R.V. travel in Dallas” and so on — but the visitors sent by the search engines stayed at Eons for an average of only 7 seconds. By contrast, regular members of Eons stayed for an average of 20 minutes a visit.

The site’s core of devoted members did not seem to care about the site as an information portal or care much for Mr. Taylor’s bromides. What they did care about was meeting others with similar interests. Social networking had not been featured on the site, but users had found one another on their own and had created more than 3,000 groups, including Cruise Travelers, Future Floridians and Francophiles.

Mr. Taylor decided to drop the search-engine marketing, to allow traffic to fall back to whatever number represented serious visitors, and to build on the social networking that had spontaneously taken root. That is why, he said, the traffic data showed a steep decline for the second half of 2007.

He chose to reorient the site around its members’ affinities, not their age. Eons would not try to compete with MySpace and Facebook for teenagers and young adults, but would try to appeal to everyone middle-aged and older. He shortened “lovin’ life on the flip side of 50” to simply “lovin’ life on the flip side,” and explained to me that “flip side” could refer to any major life event, such as becoming an empty nester, acquiring a sports car or passing through a divorce. He now conceives of Eons as providing the “friendship engine” for middle-aged adults that college provides for young adults.

Last month, he took the logical next step: dropping the age requirement. Many veteran members plastered the site with expressions of outrage. When I mildly remarked that members of Eons seemed to be “rather upset,” he corrected me: “More than upset. Livid. Ready to commit physical harm to my body.” He remained confident, however, that removing this artificial barrier to the formation of friendships was necessary.

Eons may find itself between and betwixt, alienating older members and failing to attract younger ones. Members who are over 50 may leave for the smaller social networking sites for boomers, like BoomJ or TeeBeeDee (“To Be Determined”). And yet Eons may never succeed in attracting the under-50 crowd with social networking organized around shared interests. There is no shortage of places on the Web to find others with similar enthusiasms — at Ning, a place to create social networks open to anyone, more than 165,000 distinct networks have been created.

The fate of Eons will hinge on whether boomers want to patronize online destinations that treat them as a distinct g-g-generation. Or will most prefer not to cause a big s-s-sensation?

Randall Stross is an author based in Silicon Valley and a professor of business at San Jose State University. E-mail: stross@nytimes.com.