Readers here on exceler8ion know that Shannon and I are social media advocates and practitioners. As geek marketers we use this stuff, we live this stuff, and we make this stuff. Joseph Jaffe of JaffeJuice.com, a respected colleague and conversation leader in our space is hosting an online book sale today over on Amazon.com. His latest book is called Join The Conversation and promises to share new research, case studies, insights, along with trends in social media that are happening right now in businesses around the world - large and small.
Joseph is using OUR network of bloggers and blog readers along with his offline and online social networks to make a statement about our collective voice today by selling as many books on this day as we can (Sunday October 21, 2007). I just purchased a copy for Shannon and I, and I hope you do the same. Joseph does very good work.
Buy the book today using this link and Joseph will donate all the affiliate commissions from today’s book sales to charity.
If you want to enjoy more of Joseph’s work I’d also suggest you listen to his weekly podcast Jaffe Juice and visit his company Crayon, a social media company among the first agencies to build online communities in Second Life.
Boomers are an interesting lot - and there’s a hell of a lot of them. A good combination for employers, marketers, politicians, and web 2.0 startup companies looking to build vast piles of money from them, win their favor, or harness their expertise in the work place. There’s a post from yesterday on the New York Times titled “New Social Sites Cater to People of a Certain Age” and it’s a good read for anyone wanting to get a 50,000 foot view of newer social sites like eons, and multiply.
“…there are 78 million boomers — roughly three times the number of teenagers — and most of them are Internet users who learned computer skills in the workplace. Indeed, the number of Internet users who are older than 55 is roughly the same as those who are aged 18 to 34, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, a market research firm.” - sourced NYT
So what’s going on with online social networking tools in this crown jewel of market segments? In a word - lots.
“The older demographic has a bunch of interesting characteristics,” Mr. Kedrosky added, “not the least of which is that they hang around.” - Paul Kedrosky, a venture capitalist and author of the blog Infectious Greed
Said another way, online Boomers don’t suffer from shiny object syndrome (ohhhh, that’s pretty, let’s try that!) like younger generations are famous for. Even as an entrenched Gen X’er at 38 I no longer look at a BMW without having the accompanying thought that you give up a lot of hard earned cash (see: freedom) to drive around in a pretty car. I sure as hell didn’t do that when I was in my 20’s. Web companies, employers, investors and venture capitalists are all seeing the direct benefits of catering to Boomers and for good reason.
There’s anecdotal evidence now with early web companies in the space that their instincts on Boomer’s stickiness is well founded.
“Peter Pezaris, president and chief executive of Multiply.com Inc., based in Boca Raton, Fla., said he believed that older customers were stickier than younger ones, but said the evidence so far was anecdotal. He said 96 percent of the company’s active users returned each month, a statistic that he said impressed the venture capitalists who considered investing in the site.” - Peter Pezaris CEO Multiply
In the job search engine space we have the boomer focused RetirementJobs.com, a niche Boomer version of CareerBuilder or Monster. RetirementJobs.com published some interesting research last year that corroborates some of the news featured in the New York Times piece.
“RetirementJobs.com research shows that on top of experience, workers over 50 stay in jobs longer, waste less time at work, and relate better to companies’ older customer base. Employers are increasingly luring 50+ workers given that half the U.S. workforce of 130 million people is scheduled to retire, or take a retirement job, in the next 15 years.”
RetirementJobs.com polled their users and pulled out some interesting charactertistics.
Right at the top is flexibility and lifestyle integration. Freedom. From looking at these numbers you’d have to conclude that Boomers no longer agree with their youthful battlecry so perfectly echoed in Kris Kristofferson’s Me and Bobby McGee - “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”
Like any other generation Boomers have their own unique needs and desires and they need their own kind of pad to hang out in online. I believe that the only thing holding them back from being just as addicted to social networking sites as our younger generations is a relevant hang out. Get relevant and people will get connected.
Great creative, great concept, great content. Love it! But, where are the viral hooks for people to share the video? No email to a friend, no embed code for a blog, Facebook, or MySpace, no nada. WTF? From a social media perspective this is like calling a Quarter Pounder with Cheese a Royale with Cheese.
Shannon, thanks for showing this to me luv - it made my day!
Thanks to one of Shannon’s partner’s in crime (hat tip Laura) we have the following representative example of old fashioned marketing colliding with today’s consumer.
The inspiration for the movie comes out of Microsoft. Surprised? You shouldn’t be - Microsoft has proven more than any other company that if you get out of the way of your people, your people can save your ass.
In this example Microsoft employee Geert Desager AND Microsoft’s Belgian communications agency Openhere have been turned loose in the blogosphere with some good ideas, a blog, and some video production talent. The result? Here’s what Geert has to say on their results after two weeks.
“Another small update:
more than 75.000 views of the movie
more than 240 incoming links
more than 250 comments on the blog”
What a couple of people at Microsoft did, and even more importantly, what Microsoft DID NOT DO (try to stop bloggers like Robert Scoble), is what makes it possible today for Geert and Openhere to do this.
Today this outreach continues and has continued to evolve with stories like Geert’s and Microsoft Recruitosphere pioneer Heather Hamilton. To these people, The Scoble’s, The Hamilton’s, their bosses, and bosses bosses go the thanks! Not only does Microsoft win in advancing their products and services but they also build a stronger employer brand and employee culture. Moves like this make it easier on the recruiters at Microsoft to land their next software guru. It’s a nice contrast to the tyranical employer brand that Apple is presently building for their abusive blogging and employee communication policies. Apple would do well to go back and watch their famous lemming commercials while consulting Wikipedia with a keyword search for “Orwellian.”
Well done Geert, and Robert and Heather and the legions of other Microsoft talent who have helped move us forward. Everyone in corporate america owes you and Microsoft our thanks, and not just for Excel or Word.
– Jules
p.s. Check out Openhere’s about page. I love their pitch (even if it isn’t a pitch).
“Openhere is an agency where open-minded people work for open-minded advertisers. “
You get the idea that soon the agencies that pretend to hold these values will be replaced by ones that really DO believe in what they’re selling. We believe.
My Dad just sent me a Fortune article called “I got my job through Second Life” all about real people and real companies finding jobs directly through Second Life. It reminded me that most every job I landed over my career was through my small network of friends and associates and how the same has been true for my business exceler8. Here’s an excerpt from the Fortune story.
“And just as the way we surf the web changed, the way that corporate America does business has changed in this middle space. Case in point: the most radical dotcom 2.0 recruitment wave is happening in virtual reality thanks to Second Life. Instead of posting a resume on Monster.com that will hopefully net a flesh-and-blood job interview, your avatar can be interviewed and hired all within Second Life, often for jobs possible only in virtual reality.”
“People who have been in SL since its inception might not be professional content developers, but they have become experts,” says Brandon Berger, senior strategist at OgilvyInteractive’s Digital Innovation unit. Hence, Ogilvy has hired a lot of people directly from Second Life to execute projects for the big name clients who have worked to be in Second Life.”
Imagine arriving for your Second Life interview in this little number…
I first heard about Second Life from Jim Stroud and went to check it out after our phone call. Back then (which wasn’t that long ago) SL hadn’t yet exploded on to the front page of every business magazine, blog page and tech site known to man. Despite my complete lack of interest in online role playing communities (which is strange given my dweebiness and love of online community) I recognize that I have to be involved in SL because it is a highly relevant community for my personal and business interests. I am a social media geek after all. While I find SL’s interface complex, limiting and ultimately boring, I’ll keep trying it for the promise that it holds in meeting real people. There ARE interesting people in this community. And just like other interesting communities, our exposure to the new people we meet in them expand our horizons on all fronts.
Hey Shannon, does this qualify for the category you coined “Job Search 2.0“?
AND Microsoft’s Belgian communications agency 
EXCELER8ion is where Julian and Shannon Seery Gude write on Social Media, Interactive Marketing, Technology and Internet Business Topics. 