The Graying of the Web
Older people are sticky. — That is the latest view from Silicon Valley. Technology investors and entrepreneurs, long obsessed with connecting to teenagers and 20-somethings, are starting a host of new social networking sites aimed at baby boomers and graying computer users.
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the second act of a story that started with Business 2.0's December 2006 piece on building a MySpace for grown-ups: nine months on, the thesis has moved from one startup's bet to a visible investor pattern. The New York Times frames the shift around a single word — stickiness — arguing that Silicon Valley's fixation on teens and 20-somethings overlooked the users least likely to churn.
What makes the moment notable is who is moving: investors and entrepreneurs, not just niche founders, are backing a host of new social sites aimed at baby boomers and graying computer users. The demographic logic is straightforward — the first generation to age with the web is arriving at these products with disposable income and no established network loyalty.
First-order effects
- Boomer-focused social startups gain a funding lane that youth-oriented networks treated as a sideshow, competing directly for the same venture capital and ad budgets that MySpace-era consumer sites absorbed.
Second-order effects
- Advertisers get a credible alternative to youth-skewed inventory, forcing the big social networks to justify their premium on teen reach against audiences that stay longer and buy more.
Third-order effects
- If stickiness keeps winning over growth-at-any-age, social networking consolidates from a youth-culture category into a general-purpose medium segmented by life stage — a structure later senior-tech efforts would build on.
The trend: Social networking is maturing from a youth-demographic land grab into an audience-segmented market, with user retention rather than raw signups becoming the metric investors price.