“The function that you are currently trying to use is disabled and will be back shortly,” states one message, which Laughing Squid encountered while trying to sign in.  “We are making some minor changes to this section so please bear with us until we can get it back online.  Please do NOT email me about this.  Just wait it out.”  And sure enough, Tom’s name is signed (and/or typed) to it.

I know, I know – there are important developments taking place involving stem cells, sabotage, and the Middle East, and we’re talking about an error message on a social networking site.  It’s just that kind of week, though – a story about Facebook’s use of the word “is” made the rounds yesterday.

Also, MySpace really isn’t going to win any fans with this sort of thing; while it’s funny (MG Siegler, to whom I owe a hat tip, calls it “just hilarious”), the humor is obviously unintentional. 

Ah, well.  Maybe Tom – or whoever wrote the message on his behalf – will have a good Thanksgiving and return in a better mood.

The problem with that shift is that Google News already does “professional news” a lot better than TechMeme. For instance, do you find a single story about Sun Microsystems’ new blade servers on TechMeme? No. But you find 23 (and more coming every minute) over on Google News.

The problem with Google News is that it doesn’t recognize single bloggers, but only teams. And I don’t see any video yet on Google News (I have the only video I’ve seen of the press conference so far).

But, this shows you that there still isn’t one place you can go to get all the tech news that’s happening in the world today. That’s yet another reason I read so many feeds. Someone will bring me the important news, I just have to dig for it.

Anyway, today I’ll be on Cranky Geeks. So, consider this my cranky geek rant of the day.

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A number of investment firms certainly believed there was a good prognosis. The assembly was led, according to Eons, “by Charles River Ventures, with participation from new investors Intel Capital and Humana Inc., as well as existing investors General Catalyst Partners and Sequoia Capital.”

You probably recognized a name or two out of that group; consider them evidence that Eons has won a strong following. WebProNews first wrote about the company in August, and then covered its search engine cRANKy in January. Growth is obviously taking place, although exact numbers are scarce. (When you attempt to “browse all members,” you’re informed that there are only “10,000+,” but other signs indicate a number closer to 270,000.)

Still, Eons is looking quite healthy. So are its over-50 users, for that matter – the current top search term at cRANKy is [sex]. I suppose that’s only natural, given founder and CEO Jeff Taylor’s goal to “inspire boomers to see, learn, and be more on the way to the reachable goal of living to 100.”

“Boomers are ready to play hard on the Web,” Taylor stated, “and Eons is not only changing the way they connect with each other, but also how corporate America reaches this desirable demographic.” That new $22 million should go a long way towards helping the company accomplish both objectives.

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We are in a time when it seems that age-relevant and Internet equal someone between the ages of 13 and 25. Not everyone wants the blast of information that the younger set expects from its web experience.

Taylor has followed up his building of Monster and the creation of Eons for socially networking the baby boomers with a new site called Cranky.

Cranky is a search engine, and pulls its results from the index at Ask.com. Taylor and his Cranky followers felt they could do more than just present a list of links in a response to a query.

They added features derived from Eons to Cranky. The company calls this targeting a “lens” that combines search rankings with expert reviews and Eons user ratings to serve up what it thinks are the best results for the 50+ crowd.

Taylor described the philosophy of the Cranky approach in a statement about the search site:

Getting to Cranky from Eons involved working with online market research firm Compete to determine what was popular with people over the age of 45. Once they had that data, they reviewed and rated the top 5,000 sites out of that group’s preferred places to visit.

When doing a search on Cranky, the first page displays only four results. These would be the results Cranky has rated as the top four most authoritative ones for the query. Each page of results after the first shows ten per page, closer to the norm for other search sites.

Another aspect of Cranky appears to be a nod to the strategy of giving people the most informative answer immediately. Called ‘Eons Answers’, these tips direct the Cranky searcher straight to the most relevant content available on the Eons.com site.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

Now comes news that the founder and former chairman of Monster.com has launched a new search engine to satisfy the search requests of those approaching the golden years of life.

Cranky.com uses Ask.com’s index for its backbone, but tries to serve results that are better targeted to Baby Boomers.

there were also several key differences between what’s interesting to younger Web users and the older ones that Cranky.com is targeting. While Paris Hilton and Britney Spears were top celebrity searches on Yahoo and Google, author Stephen King was the most searched celebrity according to Cranky.com. Other popular searches on Cranky.com were for information about brain builder mental exercises and jobs after retirement.

If anyone wants to admit to being “21 years old, plus a few decades”, let me know what you think about having a search engine that believes you’re “cranky”.

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Andy Beal is an internet marketing consultant and considered one of the world’s most respected and interactive search engine marketing experts. Andy has worked with many Fortune 1000 companies such as Motorola, CitiFinancial, Lowes, Alaska Air, DeWALT, NBC and Experian.

You can read his internet marketing blog at Marketing Pilgrim and reach him at andy.beal@gmail.com.