Beckoning Boomers to the Web

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Authenticity Over Market Research

Compare all of this to TeeBeeDee, begun by Parenting magazine and CNET Networks (CNET) veteran Robin Wolaner. The company has put out a grand total of two press releases and spent a few thousand dollars on marketing. It has raised a modest $7.5 million from Shasta Ventures, Monitor Ventures, and several angel investors including Ron Conway. Wolaner has hired just 19 people. TBD did some modest market research but ignored most of it. Wolaner says she learned to distrust research after working in Penthouse magazine's promotion department, where she used market research to "prove" to advertisers that people bought the magazine for the articles, not the pictures.

Instead, her team mostly built what they would like to see online and figured they'd iterate from there. That's much the way some of the most successful Web 2.0 startups, including Yelp, Digg, and Facebook, were born. TBD is a lot like those companies in other key ways: It's housed in a dingy, anonymous building in San Francisco's South of Market district. Desks are scattered around a wide open space, there's a buzz of activity, and everyone is dressed casually, many in TeeBeeDee T-shirts. The only difference: Almost everyone working there is over 40.

Which underscores another key Web 2.0 hallmark: authenticity. Every great social networking site was built by someone the community can trust and relate to. Early on, college kids and recent graduates could identify with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. And what early MySpace hipsters didn't have a little affinity for the ubiquitous, automatic first "friend," MySpace co-founder Tom Anderson, even if he was lying about his age? Building a site by listening to hundreds of thousands of vocal members is hard work, but the more a site is built for you and your peers, the easier it is to understand what they have to say.

What to Do Next

Since Taylor, 47, can't even join his own site, which bars anyone under 50, Eons is breaking the cardinal rule of the Web 2.0 handbook from the get-go. Wolaner's site, on the other hand, has no such restrictions, because it's focused less on that pivotal birthday and more on the stage of life when you start to see more wrinkles, your career may be less important, your kids are out of the house, and you're figuring out what comes next. It's her stage of life. Wolaner, 53, knows well the feeling of getting that first AARP mailing at 50. It's not "Oh, great, I get a discount!" she says. Instead, it's "Ew, am I really old enough for this?"

To its credit, Eons has adapted well to at least one Web 2.0 way of doing business: iteration. The site has learned from early mistakes and reacted swiftly, recasting itself as a social network. Eons has slashed marketing and hopes to take off through word-of-mouth instead. The feisty Taylor is coming around to the benefits of a small but loyal community, over a mass torrent of clickers who don't stick around. "Everything about me is saying we need to get this business to grow, but I am learning to do things differently this time," he says.

Capital Can't Buy Community

As a result, the distinctions between the sites now are diminished. Both recognize that boomers want a site that will help them meet new people and organize around common interests. Both understand they have to be simple and intuitive so they lure more than just early adopters. And, Eon's early missteps aside, both realize listening to users will get them there.

So who will win? Part of that answer depends on what each company counts as success. Expanding to 600,000 users in a year clearly wasn't enough to support Eons' original business model, prompting layoffs of 35% of its staff. But TBD, with its lean staff and expenses, would be thrilled to hit those numbers sometime in the next year. Because, at its core, TBD gets something Eons still may not: To build a huge Web 2.0 company, it's not about getting big fast, it's about getting it right first and then growing. A community needs to love your site, and no amount of venture capital or advertising can buy that.

Lacy is a business reporter and author of a book on the new generation of Internet moguls and the rise of Web 2.0 to be published by Penguin Publishing in 2008. Her �Valley Girl� column on the emerging Web appears biweekly at http://www.businessweek.com/technology/.