Three interesting stories from the US

Once again – thanks to David Weigelt for his excellent SilverTsunami video blog, where I heard about these three stories.

One of David’s colleagues has written a useful article titled: “What Google + means for the 50+.” I am still waiting to get onto the network to try it first hand but clearly a lot of others have joined.

This blog reckons that it took Facebook and Twitter more than two years each to hit the 20 million user mark. Google+ did it in two weeks. I haven’t the time to check these numbers but they sound about right. What is often forgotten is that Twitter was around a long time (in Internet terms) before it went mega. A bit like SMS.

I guess I fall into the category of people who says that there are a finite number of hours in a day and because of the proliferation of networks, unless I start using multi posting tools, I will get nothing else done. I am sure that is not the right attitude.

David also mentions a thing called the Harvard Age ('Young - Old' IAT) that tests the ability to distinguish old from young faces. This test often indicates that Americans have automatic preference for young over old.

If you have the time it is well worth taking. My result (very proud) is that I have “no automatic preference between Young and Old.”

You can see from the graphic that I am in a minority.

Finally, David mentions an article called the “The Death of Ageism” that poses a series of questions to for an organisation or individual to answer to measure the extent that they are ageist.

What seems like an age ago, when I wrote The 50-Plus Market,  I posed a similar set of questions and put forward the hypothesis that whilst marketing is age neutral, marketers are not.

Looks like very little has changed.

Once again – thanks David for three very interesting items. Dick Stroud