
Facebook users aging fast. "A parlor for the middle-aged?" - Shakescode
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/08/MNTS18KFB8.DTL&type=printable
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stcredzero
The middle-aged crowd is the one with the money. Middle-aged housewives are
the ones with the money to spend, and the time to discover new things to spend
on. This is why _so much_ of the retail world is aimed at _them_. As a result,
much of our culture is distorted by the lens of their viewpoint. I think a lot
of youthful rebellion of recent decades has been changed by this.

One middle aged woman I spoke to on the plane noted that there is a need to be
able to "compartmentalize" one's online social networking, much as one does
this for work. Her country club employees (where she works) have Facebook
profiles which she uses to try and make contacts for new sales, and she finds
that some of her fellow early 20's employees have Spring Break pictures only a
few clicks away from hers. Not the best thing for her. I suggested LinkedIn,
but this doesn't quite work for what she has in mind.

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noonespecial
The difference between 25 and 45 is much much less than the difference between
"hit up my wall" and "whats 'the facebook'?"

Age as a signifier in itself is slipping.

~~~
jacquesm
My own use of facebook is probably a-typical, but I have used it to reconnect
with a bunch of people that I'd lost touch with over the years, now that that
has happened I'm no longer an active user, we communicate using different
media now.

No need for me to visit facebook to keep in touch, email, the phone and so on
work just fine.

~~~
zimbabwe
Many people find Facebook easier to use than email - if you're on a Windows
box, Facebook messaging is sexier and sleeker than either Gmail or Outlook.
Facebook's also done a brilliant thing with its Phone Book. If I access it
from a mobile device, it lists the phone numbers of all my friends.

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m0shen
After seeing the cesspool MySpace turned into, I'm okay with this.

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jeremymims
Calculating the aggregate age of all facebook users is irrelevant since the
only people who matter to you on the site are your "friends". So my 15 year
old cousin's friends are mostly her real world peers and her 45 year old dad's
friends are mostly her peers. While there is a tiny overlap, it wouldn't be
considered significant.

It isn't like a bunch of old people are now trying to hang out with the young
cool kids causing the entire system to be less cool.

~~~
zimbabwe
That compartmentalization is what makes Facebook such a neat social site.

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tokenadult
I'm one of those middle-aged users of Facebook. What I find appalling about
Facebook is how much its context changes users' online behavior. Many of the
people on my friends list of Facebook are people I also know from specialized,
topical email lists. On the email lists, the people are serious and
thoughtful, but on Facebook some of the same people let loose with a bajillion
"What grocery produce section vegetable are you?" quizzes and endless flair
and bling and mafia wars. My friends are less my friends, and more of an
annoyance, on the Facebook platform. Facebook turns adults into kids.

So although I appreciate Facebook for linking me up to a few former classmates
from childhood (my first Facebook friend was one such), if I want to do what I
really enjoy, as a grown-up adult, I look for those same friends in other
contexts. And that, I think, is why Facebook is extremely unlikely to build a
business model through which it can gain more revenue per user than it has
expenses per user to serve up cute photographs and videos.

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xuhu
The 34-54 age-group is a 20-years interval (28%) versus 24-34, which is a
10-years interval (25%). In other words, there are almost twice as many users
in the 24-34 interval as either in the 34-44 or the 44-54 intervals (contrary
to what the article states). Am I missing something ?

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mattmaroon
Anyone know of a decent firefox extension for sending print articles back to
the regular web page? I keep my browser maxed on a 1920x1200 monitor, so these
are unreadable (though they're great on my Pre). I'd rather have ads and
pictures than a giant wall of text, especially since I have adblock, but is
there anyone else who shares that need?

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xuhu
Maybe remove the "&type=printable" at the end of the URL ?

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edw519
I hope I'm not the only one who doesn't care how old anyone else is. So what
if your parents (or your kids, or your teachers, or your employer, or anyone
else is on Facebook).

The guidelines of Facebook oughta be the same as the guidelines of hn which
oughta be the same as the guidelines of kindergarden. Don't post anything
you'd be embarassed if _anyone_ else saw and don't say anything online you
wouldn't say in person.

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Agent101
The trouble is it is not only you that has to follow those guidelines. Friends
can put up pictures of you and tag you. Not all content about you is placed
there by you.

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gaius
And you can set who can search for tagged pictures of you...

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Agent101
I think the average person will find it easier to socialise on two different
sites or possibly have two different facebook identities, rather than altering
the settings so that they can make sure that relatives can't see pictures of
them looking silly or doing things that they wouldn't approve of.

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zimbabwe
Because it's a lot easier to create two separate IDs and log in and out
between the two of them, or to bookmark two separate sites in the hopes that
the same friends use both of them and that the interface is just as easy to
use on both of them or that the features are equally good on both. Come _on_.

~~~
Agent101
I'm not suggesting that the same friends use both of them, I'm suggesting that
the youth will partition their social lives like they already do.

You have your friends and you have your family. You want your granny to be
able to see the pictures your mum took, but you don't want your mum to know
you are friends with bobby that she disapproves of.

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StrawberryFrog
The 30-40+ crowd have been on livejournal for a good few years now, it's not
surprising that they're on facebook too.

