More evidence that venture capitalists are focusing on the 50+ market surfaced this week with the launch of Caring.com. The site takes aim at one of the most pressing, but problematic, Boomer information needs–caring for aging parents. Caring.com is the brainchild of Andy Cohen, a former manager at Intuit, and aims to provide resources for caregivers with elderly family members. The company raised $6 million in launch funds and went live earlier this week.

There are plenty of regional caregiver information resources around the country. But no one has yet successfully cracked the national market–even though the long-distance information need is real, with adult children struggling to provide care to parents hundreds or thousands of miles away. The opportunity is big, with Caring.com citing figures stating that 34 million adults provide “personal aid, financial assistance, or both, to an older family member.”

Here are the challenges:

• Much of the caregiver advertising market is local, not national. Obvious categories include the various segments of senior housing, health care and medical providers, and financial advisers.
• Big brand advertisers confuse the Boomer and senior demographics. Caregivers may be Boomers, but all those images of wheelchairs and walkers put off marketers of luxury goods, high end retailers, etc.
• Few caregivers identify themselves as such, and their information need often pops up in a crisis environment. That presents interesting audience development challenges.

News coverage of Caring.com’s launch is at Advertising Age, Reuters and CNET.

I talked recently with Robin Wolaner, founder and CEO of TeeBeeDee, the latest social networking site launched for Boomers. Others include Eons, Boomj, Rezoom and Gather. Robin launched TeeBeeDee in September, backed by $4.8 million in venture capital. TeeBeeDee joins a wave of sites betting that Boomers will join younger audiences in adopting social networking in big numbers. She’s shown a knack for correct bets before, having launching Parenting Magazine in 1987 just as Boomers were becoming parents in droves. She later sold Parenting to Time Inc., where she continued to work on magazine success stories like Martha Stewart Living and Sunset Magazine.

Robin, are you a serial boomer entrepreneur? Parenting launched on the crest of the boomers-as-parents wave. Is it about generational information needs for you?

That’s the most positive way to say it! I keep sticking with what I know. I think it takes a lot more talent to do something for an audience you’re not part of. Fortunately the generation I’m a part of is a pretty big group. It feels easy to trust my gut, but TeeBeeDee isn’t just for Boomers. It’s a state of mind as much as anything else. It takes a level of affluence and health and vitality to have a desire to keep growing. There is a fork in the road at mid-life. Some people can’t take the steps to reinvigorate their careers and relationships. But the mindset of the person joining our site is, ‘I’m in pretty good shape, I’ve got a couple decades ahead…I’m going to make the most of things.’ ”

Over half of MySpace users are over 35. Why wouldn’t Boomers just hang out there?

MySpace has way more profiles than members, and a lot of them are fake. Marketers are using it to reach a teen market. Boomers are not going to see it as their site, or a place they are comfortable. We’re really a hybrid. We’ve created a site where people could exchange information about their experiences—it’s not about sharing with people you don’t know. Facebook is connecting with people you already know; TeeBeeDee is about expressing yourself and learning from people you know through the site.

Do you see Boomers shifting their time and attention away from traditional media in order to hang out on social networking sites?

The most telling statistic, when you look at what Boomers are doing online, is that we look just like younger people but are not yet networking in big numbers. So you have to believe one of two things: One, we are never going to network, because our concerns about privacy are such that we won’t do it. Or, second, we just haven’t had the right site yet to make networking worthwhile. That might be TeeBeeDee or some other site. I’m not predicting that all Boomers will network. But it is valuable. But it’s It’s changed my life in many ways, and I think Boomers will find the sites where they can do this.

What is the value Boomers will find in networking?

Networking has value when it has a purpose. Purposeful networking will happen in greater numbers. No one is as motivated as you are to get the answers you need. That is why networking can be purposeful—it’s not just about hanging out—people our age don’t have the time for that.”

And how will that affect traditional media that count Boomers as very important parts of their core audience?

The threat to traditional media is not uniform across segments. For example, there always will be a place for fashion magazines—in print and online. But when it comes to finding out information in a specific need-based way, that will move to sites like ours. As soon as advertisers find ways to reach the audiences they want in new, targeted ways, the old categories are threatened.

How do Boomers differ from younger social networkers in terms of their online behavior?

The comfort level of Boomers is lower than with younger users when it comes to personal revelation. That’s why we let people post with user names, instead of real names. This audience needs to have that option. During our beta test, we saw that people will start out with a user name—and then they change over to their real names after they get comfortable.

What are the business metrics for success at TeeBeeDee?

This is a good time to start a consumer Internet-based business. Membership and engagement are key, and so are frequency of visits and time spent on the site. We are a 19-person company, so we don’t have high overhead. We’ve raised enough capital to develop this business. The initial model is advertising based, but we’re not counting on ads for the first year, because we are growing the community. Our advertising launch will be in November.

The senior technology executive at Eons is departing for Microsoft (via Dick Stroud). Reed Sturtevant was one of the founding members of Jeff Taylor’s executive team. Sturtevant is a veteran of Lotus and well-regarded in the technology community. Not a great signal about Eon’s outlook.

The latest social networking site for Boomers launched officially today. TeeBeeDee is led by Robin Wolander, the founder of Parenting Magazine, and aims to be an “experience network.” TeeBeeDee has been a soft launch mode for some months now, and is backed with $4.8 million in venture funding. The company also has a few interesting players on board; Shelby Bonnie, founder of CNET, is a director, and Trish McDermott, a former “vp of romance” at Match.com, will write about “dating makeovers.” (How many companies can say they have a former vp of romance on board?) Here’s what Wolander has to say in the launch release:

“Baby boomers are a vital generation with 4 billion years of experience. And now we have entered another life stage. The kids are leaving home, we are dealing with aging parents, and we have a desire or need to change the focus of our relationships and careers. . .TeeBeeDee enables members to share experiences and information about everything from relationships to work, families, hobbies, and passions.”

As noted here and elsewhere, Boomers are going to adopt online networking in big numbers–just as they’ve embraced every other communication tool that’s come along. And the market will be expanding dramatically as Boomers age in. But it’s still a matter of who will be able to grab share and develop audience loyalty by making site users comfortable and getting them to feel they are part of a community.

First impressions of TeeBeeDee:

• Looks like it’s aiming more upscale than Eons, which has a mass look and appeal.
• Visually, very similar to Eons.
• Lots of content about sex after 40

Let us know what you think after you poke around the site a bit.

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.