Boomers Take Control of Facebook

‘Older’ generation gets up to speed with online networks | tennessean.com | The Tennessean.

This story in the Tennessean.com got me thinking about how Facebook has been transformed from a college networking site to a social and business marketing tool for Baby Boomers.

I first learned of Facebook when my daughter was in college. At the time, only people with email addresses that ended in .edu could register for the site. I assumed it was to keep the perverts off the site. My daughter got hooked on it largely because she managed to find classmates from grammar school and even pre-school, friends she hadn’t seen since we relocated from Florida to Illinois. I was just as excited about it as she was and often I would ask, “Well, how is so-and-so? Where is he attending college?” And during all of this, I had no interest at all in joining the network for obvious reasons. Besides LinkedIn was my choice for professional networking.

Then it happened. Facebook started to grow up. I was working for an advertising agency and it was our job to be on the cutting edge of new applications that could help our clients find job candidates in unlikely places. Facebook was one of those places. As a way of helping us “pitch” this idea to clients and prospective clients, the agency set up a Facebook page and all of the employees were encouraged to create profiles. I did it… but reluctanctly. I felt like I was infringing upon my daughter’s space on the Web. I created a profile, but I didn’t friend my daughter. We both agreed it was a good idea.

I eventually left the agency and went to work as the marketing manager for a nonprofit organization. Even before I left the agency, I rarely visited my profile on Facebook. I friended a lot of colleagues and co-workers, some I knew, some I didn’t because they worked in other offices, i.e., London, Toronto, Los Angeles, etc.

As my Facebook page began to languish (I really forgot about it), a friend sent me an invitation to join the social networking site. It was just a standard invite, no personalization or anything. I ignored it because, again, I didn’t want to play in that arena. Several weeks later, this same friend and I were talking on the phone and she lectured me about why I should be on Facebook; how much fun it was; how it was so vastly different from LinkedIn, dah, dah, dah, dah. So I relented and created a profile.

Three weeks went by after I created the profile until I started getting “friend” requests from people I never thought would be on Facebook and from people I expected to find on Facebook. That’s code for people my age who wanted to “friend” me and people younger than me, like nieces and nephews, wanted to “friend” me. Accepting their invites is what caused me to get on Facebook one Saturday morning and before I knew it, it was Saturday afternoon. But I had a ball! My friend was absolutely right. Facebook is fun and so much more exciting than LinkedIn.

So, now I have something like 138 friends on Facebook, compared to nearly 200 ”connections” on LinkedIn. I love reading the status updates from friends, including one friend who posts a status update multiple times in a work day. I had to ask one day how she kept up with her job responsibilities. She said something about RSS feeds and Tweetdeck and I just left it at that. Too much for me to digest at the time.

There are studies that show the 35 and older demographic are responsible for the explosive growth in Facebook profiles. I once posed the question on my Facebook page, “When did Facebook go from being a networking tool for college kids to becoming a networking tool for Boomers?” One friend responded, “Hey, Xers had something to do with Facebook growth too!” 

Seriously though, Boomers are the ultimate networkers and so it makes sense that we would assume more space on a site that our children helped develop into what it is today.

So, now my daughter and I are ”friends” on Facebook. But it took three months for it to happen. Neither of us rushed to “friend” the other. It was funny the day I responded to one of her status updates and her girlfriend replied, “Your mom is on Facebook?!”  

Yeah, I’m on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. And I admit, I have more fun with Facebook than I do LinkedIn, although LinkedIn Groups are rather cool, especially the Social Media Group.

The story in the Tennessean.com implies that the “older” generation finds it difficult to navigate social networking sites. I beg to differ. It’s the technology that makes it difficult for some people. It’s really not that hard though. In fact, I would love to get my 90-year old grandmother online. But she is so old school, relying on the telephone and letters as primary sources of communication. She makes me laugh when she pretends not to know about the Internet, email or computers. I know different though cause Grandma is more “connected” than most people her age.