AARP Webcast

“How retirees are managing today and what effect pension trends and other economic factors will have on future retirees?”

Sound interesting? This is the title of one of the sessions being covered during an AARP webcast. If you are in Washington on the May 14th you can go and see the thing live, otherwise contact AARP for the Web version of the event. Dick Stroud

YouTube for intellectuals

Fora.tv is the Web site for intellectually inclined YouTube viewers (i.e. the sort of people that read this blog). This is a smart site. Beautifully created. Have a look at this highlights video of Robert Shapiro talking about the how economies around the world will react to the aging of the baby boom generation. Dick Stroud

Scan not read – repeat again – Scan not read

Jakob Nielsen does it again. He sends me a newsletter that I cannot help reading and then blogging about.

This is not a specific 50-plus posting, but as applicable to them as any other age group. Nielsen’s research shows that on average users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is the more likely figure.

Another research study is used to provide the data for Nielsen’s conclusions Not Quite the Average: an Empirical Study of Web Use. If you don’t mind the hassle of registering you can also download this paper.

The next time you are sitting in meeting, debating if you should use word A or B remember that most people don’t give a damn because they will not read it. Creating text for web sites is more like painting pictures than crafting exquisite prose. Dick Stroud

Older radio audiences increase (some of them)

Saga radio (radio aimed at the 50-plus) was acquired by Guardian Media Group and renamed Smooth Radio. As the blurb says : “Smooth provides a broad mix of easy listening music from the last five decades and intelligent, entertaining speech for the mature 40-something adult”. Smooth has six stations across the UK.

RAJAR (Radio Joint Audience Research), which is the official body in charge of measuring radio audiences in the UK, has just published for the first quarter of 2008. It found that one of the best performing commercial networks was Smooth Radio, which increased its share from 1.9% to 2.1% and grew its reach from 2.19m to 2.38m. Now I wonder why that is? Might it have something to do with demographics?

In truth it also has something to do with Smooth's programming and the marketing campaign to promote the station But of all the commercial radio stations Smooth was the only one to show any significant increase in listeners. Dick Stroud

Consumer segmentation and social media?

This article in AdAge (US) gives a summary description of the social networking behaviour of some of the consumer groups used by Simmons Research (part of Experian). It is the first time that I have seen any attempt to overlay social networking behaviour onto lifestyle groups.

I particularly liked the definition of the “Smart Green” group.

They prefer to buy products in recycled packages and eschew products that pollute. They are average users of social networking, blogging and podcasting but slightly above average in message boards. They are older (50-plus) and are most likely to go online for health or financial information. And in the spirit of their eco-friendly attitude toward trees, they're 23% more likely to send electronic greeting cards.

Know anybody like that? Dick Stroud