My granny’s on Facebook. Will the new user be old?

Posted by mindjumpers Jul 22nd, 2009

Written by Sebastian Overgaard

Try this: picture a typical Facebook-user in your head? Who do you see? My first guess is that you see a young web savvy person. Giving him an iPod, a narcissistic character and a Coca Cola probably wouldn’t ruin the picture either, would it?

From what I experience, the general notion among many companies is that Facebook is only suitable to reach a young target group. I believe that this in some degree is going to change in the near future.

Today with the massive popularisation of Facebook I think we’ll experience a whole group of new users of the social network: The Old Generation – The New Senior Users Of Facebook.

Take my 74-year old grandmother for example. She is on Facebook. And she loves it. She now follows the lives of her many grandchildren. She sees new pictures of them, watches their walls and tries to figure out their emotional state by reading their status-updates almost every day.

For my grandmother Facebook is filling an empty space in her life. Because of geography and the natural social disconnection with her young busy family members she could experience months or even years without seeing some of them. With Facebook she’s now close to the family again.

I know another cool woman who is retired and therefore has loads of time to spend on Facebook. Like my grandmother she is extremely active. She watches videos, clicks on links, she likes, she comments, she shares content she finds interesting.

In a generation under that, I see my mother who entered the world of Facebook some months ago and immediately started connecting with old schoolmates as well as posting pictures on my aunt’s wall. She is still learning – and even more interesting – still inviting more of her friends her age.

These days I hear people talking about the “Facebook-craze” being over (I’m living in Denmark – the country in the world with the highest percentage of the population using Facebook). I hear stories of those who simply can’t bother spending time on it anymore and closing their profiles.

While this is a natural reaction to an overly hyped phenomenon like Facebook, my point is that we should look at the maturing of the network. There will be more senior users, right now more than 20% of Danes between 45-65 are using the network. They will in general have more time (and money) to spend, which makes them quite an interesting group of people for marketers.

So why not start creating some interesting solutions and Facebook-campaigns for my granny and the other new old users?