The New York Times has a good roundup today on the proliferation of venture-backed social networking sites. The article catalogues some of the more prominent launches, including Eons, TeeBeeDee. Most recent deal to be announced is a $16.5 million round for Multiply. Not all these sites are aimed at the 50+ demo, but the article’s key point is that venture capitalists are discovering the value of older consumers - defined as anyone past their teen years. Why? One VC, Paul Kedrosky, told the Times: “The older demographic has a bunch of interesting characteristics . . .not the least of which is that they hang around.”

The current glut of sites points to a shakeout. But 50+ social network sites have these trends in their favor:

• Boomers are demonstrating that they will join communities where they feel comfortable–witness strong growth in unique visits, page views and time-per-visit at Eons.
• They are launching into a strong growth demographic. In fact, the 50+ age bracket will be the only growth demo between now and 2015, according to Census Bureau data.

That sounds alot better than battling over a shrinking audience of fickle teenagers.

Grandparents.com launched this week, accompanied by articles in Advertising Age and Mediaweek. Grandparents might seem like a pretty tight niche, until you consider that they represent a huge chunk of spending power in children’s products–the average grandparent spends $500 per year on a grandchild, according to the Grandparent Marketing Group.

Grandparents.com is run by Yahoo! veteran Jerry Shereshewsky. The site has a nice opportunity to serve as a translator and cultural bridge to grandchildren by alerting grandparents to the hottest new gadgets and gifts. The site focuses on travel, gifts and social networking. One nice feature is an activities database that can be sorted for location, type and child’s age. I put it to the test by doing some test runs on Chicago–the town I know best. Content looked pretty good, even in a tough sort like “outdoor fun for teenagers.”

I asked the site’s management to answer a few questions about their plans:

Tell us a bit about your professional background and that of your partners, and how you came to focus on grandparents as a market.

There are lots of sites and organizations that are dedicated to the older age groups (AARP, etc). There are also lots of family sites that give parenting advice. Grandparents.com is the only Web site that speaks to grandparents as grandparents with regularity about a wide variety of topics relating to the grandparenting experience. Grandparents.com does not speak to our grandparents in terms of age. Rather, we speak to them based on a lifestage - people whose children have children of their own.

Not only do we have a distinguished editorial staff pulled from top tier media outlets like the Boston Globe and New York magazine, but we also have an expert advisory board of experienced grandparents. In addition, Grandparents.com also facilitates the conversation among its community of users. This way grandparents can generate reviews or comments from which other Grandparents can learn. If a segment of the community does not like what Grandparents.com has to say about a particular topic or article, they have the ability to share their thoughts with others through the tools we provide. In short, if we fail to provide the best content, our audience is going to let us and each other know.

Grandparents represent a fairly broad range of age. For that matter, so do grandchildren. Where are the best opportunities within the age ranges, and where will grandparents.com focus its content and marketing efforts?

We focused on Boomer grandparents because of their greater familiarity with the internet and online tools. However, the content of the site deals with issues and topics universal to all grandparents regardless of age. We speak to active grandparents who want to get the most out of their relationship with their grandchildren.

The site focuses on travel, gifts and advice, as well as blogs and social networking. Which of these areas do you expect to be most important to site users and advertisers?

In both qualitative and quantitative studies, we found that grandparents were looking for information on the topic areas we cover on the site. To over 95% of grandparents, their role as grandparent is a high priority in their life and the site’s editorial content reflects that fact. More than two-thirds of grandparents indicated that they wanted help with gifts and with activities. There has been a 60% increase in the amount of trips that children take with their grandparents since 1996. As such that was a natural focus area for Grandparents.com editorially. With the recent launch of the site, we are going to talk to our users to see which content and functional areas they find useful, which they don’t and what they would like us to build.

As for our advertisers, the meaningful content and features will be those that allow them to have a dialogue with our consumers. Great advertising is about having a great conversation. Grandparents.com would like to partner with advertisers who want to have such a conversation with our audience, understanding their role and profound value. This audience is the single largest demographic cut of the population other than gender and race and controls nearly 75% of the nation’s wealth.

Who do you see as your primary competition?

Lots of sites are dedicated to the older age groups, but no one is speaking to grandparents specifically. For example, some might call AARP a competitor, but we are really doing different things for many of the same people. AARP’s focus is much broader than Grandparents.com - generally speaking to an age rather than a lifestyle. Grandparents.com is all about one thing - facilitating special relationships between grandparents and grandchildren. While there are a few mom-and-pop sites on grandparenting, none have dedicated the resources to providing grandparents anything like Grandparents.com

So says stopthejunkmail, a subscription service that helps people reduce direct mail delivery. Their quarterly survey say more than 40 percent of consumers getting unwanted mail are 65 or older (the survey refers to these folks as Boomers, which is incorrect). The site doesn’t say why this is the case, but I’ll speculate that older people not be as familiar with the array of “do not mail” services available. The Direct Marketing Association has a service that carries a $1 charge and gets you off lots of big lists. The DMA page also tells you how to get off specific company lists. Direct mail reduction is one solid way to act on growing environmental concern about all that wasted paper, printing and mailing waste.

Advertising Age speculates about a possible magazine launch for Boomer women from Martha Stewart Living OmniMedia. This follows an earlier piece in Women’s Wear Daily and no new ground is broken, since MSLO isn’t confirming anything. But the buzz around Stewart, along with Ann Taylor’s confirmed plans to launch a new apparel chain for Boomer women, points to growing interest in the segment from major corporations. It’s especially interesting that both these companies already cater to Boomer women in a big way, but seem to perceive an opportunit to get a sharper focus on the demo. Ad Age notes that MSLO flagship Martha Stewart Living’s median reader age is 46.7.

I’m one of those Boomers who still reads news on paper–I look through three newspapers every morning. Over breakfast today, I caught up on Tribune Co.’s lingering struggle to finish up its leveraged buyout and get off Wall Street before its stock collapses entirely (full disclosure: I’m a former employee and stockholder, but I’m just suffering along with everyone else). There’s nothing unique about the Tribune story; falling circulation and advertising revenue, a growing number of media choices, fragmenting consumer use of content (For other examples, see Knight Ridder or Dow Jones).

When will this industry realize that it has a great story to tell? Namely: Every day, newspapers have the attention of the most desirable audience in America–Baby Boomers. Companies like Tribune are panicked about their failure to attract young readers. Meanwhile, they continue to own the market of educated, affluent consumers.

A couple of facts from the annual Newspaper Association of America (NAA) publication, The Source: Newspapers by the Numbers:

• 58 percent of U.S. adults age 50-59 read a daily newspaper–and 66 percent read a Sunday paper
• Boomers are the most desirable demographic segment around. Period (see NAA chart above).

Why not just acknowledge reality and promote newspapers as the best way for advertisers to reach the Boomer sweet spot? Because publicly traded newspaper companies need to convince Wall Street that its future growth prospects are attractive. But as more go private, publishers should get in touch with reality. Boomers can be a cash cow for newpapers for decades to come, if only publishers can get over their obsession with the youth market.

Tom Mann isn’t backing down. A debate over humor in marketing and aging broke out here and elsewhere online a few weeks ago, with Mann’s Erickson communities taking a bit of a beating in the commentary. Unbowed, Tom is back this week with a new video spoof of Budweiser’s celebrated Wassup ad campaign, created by Erickson community residents and assisted by a video-savvy grandson. Kind of cute, I’d say…but let the debate continue….