A Web Site for Boomers Celebrates the Upside of Aging
Last Updated: 9/26/2007
The massive postwar Boomer generation likes to pride itself on redefining each stage of life that it passes through – from youth to child-bearing to menopause. As the eldest Boomers approach old age, many are hoping to make this next stage no exception. Just take a look at the Boomer-oriented Web site, Eons.com, with its upbeat credo: ‘Loving Life on the Flipside of 50.’
Eons.com is created by Boomers, for Boomers, and aimed at celebrating the more uplifting aspects of aging.
“We want to say loud and proud that a lot of great things come with being 50 – like life experience and a thirst to keep learning and experiencing the world around us,” says Linda Natansohn, Eons’ senior vice president of strategic development.
Eons.com was conceived in 2005 by Jeff Taylor, then 47, founder of the successful job-search Web site, Monster.com. Taylor was eager to give the Golden Years a boomer-style makeover, in anticipation of getting there himself. ‘Eons’ role is to see if we can shape a new era of power and fulfillment and value at every stage of life, even retirement,” he told the Boston Globe at the company start-up. “I hate this whole puttering thing. I have way bigger plans for my life — and so does this whole generation.”
Taylor and his team began their undertaking by spending weeks traveling across the country, talking to people aged 48 to 80. “They told us about their dreams, concerns, fears, and unfulfilled needs, and we built a Web site based on what they told us,” Natansohn says. The site has sections on relationships, money, travel, and health, as well as more unusual offerings such as LifeMap, which helps users chart their own life stories, and a longevity test, which calculates how long they’ll live, based on their lifestyle and age, and recommends strategies for better health. The company’s corporate backers, Liberty Mutual, Humana, Fidelity, CVS/pharmacy, Verizon Wireless and Harrah’s Entertainment, advertise products relating to each topic.
Perhaps the most popular part of Eons.com is its discussion boards – social networks, as executives call them. The site currently hosts more than 2,500 groups, encouraging chat on subjects ranging from romance to fitness to bereavement. “It’s very clear that this generation wants to connect with each other, and Eons gives them a place to find like-minded people,” Natansohn says. “There’s a lot of intergenerational discussion, so people can find other empty nesters there, and also information about elder care for their parents.”
73 year old Jim Hannah, an Eons user in Staten Island, New York, has found members to share his enthusiasm for wine, poetry, and politics. “And because it’s for people 50 and older, I’m able to operate at a certain level of knowledge,” he says. He logs in early every morning, when he wakes before his family. “Eons gives me a lovely quiet period of time to read something interesting.”
To visit Eons.com, click here.
Sue Woodman is a free lance writer based in New York City. She is the author of Last Rights: The Struggle Over the Right to Die (Da Capo, 2001).
