Do we really need another social network site? Yes, we do! I am still waiting for a winner that allows me to share private details such as kid photos and contact information with select family members close friends. I want this data to be unavailable to anyone outside of my circle, including advertisers. Are there options available now that do this? Yes again, but I need a solution that I can get Grandma on board just as easily as my technically inclined brothers.
My problem with all these social networks is getting the family on board.
I'm still waiting for a mature product that I can be confident about sharing with them - G+ is there, but not really anything else. I don't want to get +20 people onto a site only to have it go "sorry, we're shutting down", or "yay, we've been acquired, sorry early adopters" in a year.
I've been burnt before, and I hate it when it happens.
In my opinion, to be truly confident that your data will be forever exclusive to yourself and people you choose is to pay for the service, to keep it running in the long run.
Otherwise, how is the service going to survive? They have to monetize somehow down the road to pay the bills.
How long are we going to be saying that grandmas are technologically illiterate?
RFC 3 is older (by a few months) than me - April 1969.
Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf are about 70. (That's old enough to be a great grand-parent.) Jon Postel was born in 1943. There are many old women who are Internet pioneers because they were librarians, and the Internet was something that got rolled out to university libraries early on.
The killer app for getting the elderly online and using computers/tablets/smartphones has been Skype, in my experience. Specifically, video chat. It's revolutionised communication with family who live far away. I suppose these days FaceTime would be equally appropriate. From there it's a slippery slope for most of them. The retired in my partner's and my family now spend more time playing video games than those of us in our 20s. (they simply have more time to spare)
I could see them picking up on something like this if they could overcome the trust barrier. Most 50+s I know don't trust Facebook and don't have an account there (I don't trust them either, but I'm in the minority in my age group).
