Social Media Spin

“From the last seven years of polling, we’ve found that what older peo­ple like best about the Inter­net is being able to con­nect to fam­ily and friends,” — Susan­nah Fox — Pew Inter­net & Amer­i­can Life Project and the Kaiser Fam­ily Foundation

New fam­ily social net­works are pop­ping up almost every day. The real draw to these sites for Boomers seems to be the huge dis­con­nec­tions fam­i­lies have these days. More fam­i­lies are geo­graph­i­cally sep­a­rated from each other than ever before. With the hol­i­day sea­son rapidly approach­ing, the fam­ily event coör­di­na­tor (usu­ally a Boomer) is look­ing to the inter­net to con­nect geo­graph­i­cally dis­tant fam­ily mem­bers. Fam­ily is a big deal to Boomers, and fam­ily social net­works pro­vide an easy way to gather the fam­ily group together again.

Boomers also feel a need to pass on to their fam­ily and the next gen­er­a­tion the story of where they began. So fam­ily social net­works are not only a place to con­nect socially, but they’re also a place to dis­cover your family’s past, and dis­cover your­self in the process.

In meet­ing with fam­ily social net­work­ing exec­u­tives recently, I’m find­ing that one of hottest trends in fam­ily social net­works is in the field of DNA social net­work­ing. I recently spoke to a com­pany whose USP is based on hav­ing a large data­base of DNA results for users to access. There’s huge poten­tial in this area of social net­work­ing. So much so that Google recently invested $3.9 mil­lion in a DNA social net­work­ing startup called 23andMe. The goal of DNA social net­work­ing sites like this is to help users gain a bet­ter under­stand­ing of their genetic infor­ma­tion, and track down lost or dis­tant relatives.

Famiva.com

Famiva Home Page

Famiva  just had a major update over the week­end, and the look is clean and appeal­ing.  Within Famiva, users can work with fam­ily mem­bers on a secure site to “build your fam­ily tree, share pho­tos and sto­ries, stay cur­rent with fam­ily events and reminders, and much more.” What Boomers will like about Famiva is how easy it is. There’s no sign-​​up required and has really great fea­tures to cap­ture geneal­ogy as well as con­nect cur­rent family.They also have a great tour which makes it easy to know exactly what to expect from the network.

Genoom.com
Genoom is an inno­v­a­tive site with a bevy of tools to cre­ate pri­vate fam­ily net­works. Genoom helps fam­ily researchers not only learn about their past, but con­nect fam­ily together for cur­rent events and cre­ate dig­i­tal heir­looms for future generations.

Geni.com
Geni  is a great great fam­ily social net­work which helps users trace their fam­ily roots. Geni also has the fam­ily tree, photo shar­ing, and event cal­en­dar of other fam­ily social net­works, but it also allows users to add fam­ily friends as “friends of your fam­ily tree”.

Obvi­ously, boomers are becom­ing more active in social media, one study last year cites that 45% of boomers online are using fam­ily social net­works. What does this mean for busi­nesses look­ing to adver­tise on social media? Don’t count out baby boomers in your social adver­tis­ing plans. They’ve got finan­cial strength that many Gen Y and X don’t have yet, so if your prod­uct or ser­vice has any over­lap for the boomer gen­er­a­tion, either as users or buy­ers, make them the focus of some of your mar­ket­ing efforts.

If you’re ready to cre­ate a social media mar­ket­ing strat­egy, and would like to see how you can incor­po­rate boomers into that strat­egy, con­tact me. Let’s talk about how we can work together to help you reach your goals.

ghen­nipher [at] ghennipher.net