After a short technophobic stint, the baby boomers are becoming increasingly active in the online community. Most of us are aware that ages 55+ is the fastest growing user segment of Facebook. However, as you can imagine social media is not alone in this unprecedented growth. With this increased online activity comes the building of valuable digital assets. Lets take a look at the not so obvious online assets of the baby boomers.
1.Dating Website Profiles-Dating websites continue to gain popularity among the older crowd, though it is often overlooked as meeting people online is stigmatized to a certain degree. However, it can not be overlooked that the online dating industry is now worth $4 billion worldwide. In the last year 17% of couples 50+ who married met on a dating site. Popular sites for the boomers include Match.com, eHarmony, and Agematch.com.
2. OnlineGambling Accounts- Humans love to gamble. Online gambling makes it easy to access your favorite games in just a few clicks. For example, the Internet supports 110 sport-related gambling sites alone. This increasing popularity among the older crowd could be due to the fact that it allows you to stay in your home environment, and the added element of privacy is certainly a factor. It is important to realize that some accounts have a substantial amount of currency in them- so having a plan set in place for these accounts is necessary.
3. AARP Online Community- This is the ultimate online community for people 50+. You can post pictures, subscribe to e-newsletters, join groups, all the while building your personal profile. A similar site is eons, which topics and layout are also tailored for the older crowd, making this another favorite hotspot among the boomers. AARP and related profiles tell a lot about the user, making them a very sentimental resource. Aside from just a community, AARP Financial helps facilitate a comfortable retirement- making this an obvious valuable digital asset.
4.WebMD Profiles-This award- winning website provides a wealth of health information and tools for managing a healthy lifestyle. With age our body experiences increased complications; with WebMD one can browse an extensive symptom checklist, pharmacy information, and blogs of physicians. The most important aspect? A personal profile contains a place to store personal medical information. With access to ones account, you can track their medial history and search topics. This information could be of value to any loving family member trying to trace symptoms, etc.
5. Vibrantnation- This interactive community is exclusively for influential women 50+. The blogs and topics range from work, style, relationships, wellness, books, and more. Most importantly, here you can discuss your passion, whatever it may be. This growing community has become a leading resource and interactive platform for older women. These profiles can tell use a lot about the members life and interests.
Regardless of the digital asset, Entrustet.com allows you to pass it on or delete it upon passing. For Free.
While Entrustet is highly intertwined with the explosion of virtual social networks, the social networks addressed in this Ted Talk by Nicholas Christakis refers to the actual gathering and relationships of people- since the beginning of time. These social networks display patterns and give us insight on future events. Using this information, we can foresee epidemics with pristine accuracy.
Two important social ideas
Adoption curve (or S curve)- this is based on the theory that at first limited people are infected or influenced, then later growth multiplies until it reaches a point where the population it has the potential to influence is saturated, and recedes. This holds for germs, trends, behavior, etc.
Degree of anode- how many people we have the ability to infect or influence. This is relavant because with this we can track basic trends or ideas in a population based on the amount certain people have the ability to influence. Take a look at this picture below.
Network Sample
By viewing this picture you can understand that people located in the center are more likely to be exposed to illnesses or ideas than people on the outskirts. They are also more likely to spread illnesses or ideas. Using this common logic, it would be more useful to track the people in the middle than the people on the outskirts if we wanted to see a particular trend in a population. By figuring out who is in the middle and then monitoring them, we can track early exposure. This is because if a centralized person is exposed, it is likley everyone else will soon be.
This method of measuring is very effective, and can be applied to many items from pathogens to cultural norms. Chris does a much better idea of describing the procedure than I do, and gives some great examples of the ideas implementation. However, is this idea of tracking trends and people ethical, and will it be used for the common good of society?
Below is the video, it is fascinating to see this idea implemented in real examples. I suggest you take a peek.
- Madison social gaming company raises 800,000. Say what?! That’s right local company PerBlue is managing a game that by tracking your location via GPS, you are then put into a virtual world.
- How far is too far when it comes to internet exposure? Rutgers University students broadcasted their unaware roommate doing sexual acts over the internet and promoted it with Twitter. The exposed student then took his life by jumping off the George Washington Bridge.
- The Internet Governance Forum whose goal it is “to foster the sustainability, robustness, security, stability, and development of the internet” just had it’s fifth annual meeting where people gathered from all over the world to meet in Lithuania. Internet privacy was a main topic.
Facebook is now known as the most commonly used social network worldwide, but like any website, it must constantly be updated and fixed. I’ve thought a lot about what things I dislike about Facebook; many of which I have no control over. Just a couple examples include the multiple page and chat errors, along with too many application invitations.
However, there are features you can add or modify to make your Facebook world better.
Lets summarize the top 3 ideas from the pros at Lifehacker to beef up your Facebook profile in their Top 10 Facebook Fixes article.
1. Prevent Sites from Auto-Customizing Content with Your Facebook login. Do you ever get frustrated when visiting a given site and your actions on said site are automatically posted to your Facebook account? ”I feel like Facebook follows me all over the web, I want to be on Facebook only when I’m on Facebook, ” say Sam Lee, a University of Wisconsin Senior studying website design. You can fix this by turning off Facebook’s “Instant Personalization” in your settings. Or for ultimate protection from being followed around the web, shut down access to your Facebook credentials from anyone except Facebook itself by using Adblock Plus and custom filters.
2. Filter and compress your Facebook Alerts. I personally hate the Facebook emails I receive that for example say, “Bobby invited you to beat his score on Farmville,” or ”Jessica also liked Jeffrey’s picture.” It is distracting and makes me want to decrease my Facebook activity just so I don’t receive more notifications. However, I am not at the point where I want to cut off all ties with Facebook notifications. By using NutshellMail you can filter and manage all your online social account, and receive just the specific notifications you desire – pretty cool if you ask me.
3. Have a Plan for Your Account After Death. It goes without saying that Facebook has become a huge part of lives. Like anything else important in our lives, we should have a plan with what we want done with those ‘assets’ if we were to pass away. Lifehacker reccommends leaving this task to Entrustet, for some interesting reasons which I had never thoroughly considered. “It could be more than a little awkward for friends, distant relatives, and others to leave you messages on your Facebook account, then find out you passed away.” More importantly, essentially everyone is ‘locked out’ of your account if you don’t leave the ‘keys’ to someone.
I recommend that you check out the article Top 10 Facebook Fixes and consider these tweaks to make your Facebook world more enjoyable.
Is there anything on the top 10 list you’d like to add?
