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"Eons, a social network for the over 50s, launched yesterday.  They've also thrown out a good tidbit for the bloggers, journalists and Diggers to get excited about: the service comes with an online obituary database that sends out death alerts when people pass away.  Eons was created by Monster.com founder Jeff Taylor, who knows how to spin a good story - he told Reuters \"The death business is growing\" and added that deaths in the US have risen from 2.2 million in 2000  to 2.4 million in 2005.  They even have a death calculator that works out your longevity based on your answers to certain questions.\n\n\nIt certainly makes for catchy headlines (\"MySpace for Boomers Sends Out Death Alerts\"), but is it any good?  Well, the first thing to mention is that the MySpace comparisons are partially correct.  You can create a profile page and bio, send private messages to other users and join groups based around interest areas like gadgets, gardening and knitting.  You can also write a blog and subscribe to blog posts from others.  What's more, you can send email invites to people you know.  What you can't do is add other users to a list of friends - something that's standard on MySpace, Friendster, hi5 and the rest.  Another interesting feature is social goal sharing - just like eLifeList, you can display your life goals on your profile page and find other members who share the same goals.  \nBut there are also lots of features that make Eons feel like a traditional portal - things like \"featured articles\", brain games and quizzes.  That's in contrast to typical social networks, where the community is the content - although admittedly you can comment on these articles in the forums.  And of course there are tools like the longevity calculator, the obituary alerts and a special search engine for the over 50s - all features that you'd expect in a portal.  (Sidenote: with the addition of MySpace Comedy, MySpace Film and other professionally-created content, MySpace is now a portal too.)\nEons is a really nice attempt - but its success or failure hinges on whether the over 50s really demand a social network.  The obvious conclusion is that they'll see moderate growth, but nowhere near the success of the  youth-oriented networks.\n\n\n\n\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2006/08/01/eons-launches-social-network-for-the-over-50s/>