silver surfers - Internet Marketing News and Blogs

The average age of UK internet users is on the rise, thanks to the growing online presence of the over-55s, or 'silver surfers'.

This is the finding from Nielsen Online's latest study (pdf). While the under-25's share of the UK internet population has fallen from 29% to 25%, silver surfers' share has increased from 16% to 19%.

Travel group Saga has launched a social network aimed exclusively at the over 50s.

SagaZone, as it is called, features profile pages, forums and blogs for its members.

Internet banks have proved adept recently in targeting one of the web’s fastest growing demographics – the silver surfer, according to new data.

Figures for 2006 from payment association Apacs show that over-55s provided the greatest proportion of new UK online banking customers in the past five years.

Tee Bee Dee, a US-based social network aimed at the over 40s market, has received $4.8m (£2.4m) in a Series A funding round led by Shasta Ventures and also involving Monitor Ventures.

Warner Breaks' Matthew Finch has over eight years experience in the online world, starting out as a developer before moving into e-commerce, online marketing and strategy. He oversees online marketing for Warner Breaks where he has significantly increased online sales and received a number of awards for campaigns.

Here, Mat talks about targeting older internet users - an untapped opportunity for many online marketers...

A survey of the UK's home computing habits has revealed that over-55s are the most frequent home PC users in the UK.

The Microsoft survey of 1,000 UK PC users found that 95% of those aged 55 and over used the internet on a daily basis, compared with 85% of 16-24 year olds. Seventy seven percent of the group go online more than once a day, compared with 72% of 16-24s.

New stats from Hitwise show that over 55s, or ‘silver surfers’, are close to becoming the largest demographic age group online.

The largest is currently the 35-44 age group, which accounted for 23.5% of internet visits in the four weeks up to 12th May. Silver surfers had 22% of visits.

Jakob Nielsen's latest article looks at site redesign tips which will lead to increased sales and improved customer loyalty.

Nielsen has 10 redesign recommendations that are the most likely to increase return on investment for your website, most of which should be relatively simple to implement.

Eons, which bills itself as a social network for the over-50s, has raised $22m (£11.4m) in its second round of funding.

The Boston-based firm has raised the cash from an investor group led by Charles River Ventures. Also involved were new investors Intel Capital and Humana, along General Catalyst Partners and Sequoia Capital, which had invested previously.

The recent petition against the proposed introduction of road pricing, which has gathered over 1.5m ‘signatures’, has led to a huge rise in traffic to the 10 Downing Street website.

Heather Hopkins from Hitwise has looked into the traffic to the road pricing petition website over the past month, and the demographic data reveals some interesting facts.