WebProNews » Eons

Eons Fires One-Third Of Staff

Doug Caverly — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 14:35:03 +0000

Mass firings can make people nervous – it’s only natural to wonder who’s next. The remaining employees at Eons are apparently feeling peaceful, however, following a reorganization that saw 24 of their colleagues go.

For Eons, 24 is a significant number – it equals about one-third of the company’s personnel. But don’t think poorly of those who are left; Xconomy’s Robert Buderi writes, “The perception is that the company – bloated in staff, with too many projects taking too many resources – is finally ‘focusing in on what works and jettisoning all the stuff that didn’t work,’ according to our source.”

Eons, by the way, is a social network for folks over the age of 50. Icons on the homepage lead to sections about people, fun, love, money, body, “lifepath,” obits, games, and travel. The most morbid of those – obits – is being viewed as dead weight, as is the area in which there are so many focused competitors – travel.

Aspects of the organization seem quite logical, then, and in no way should this development be seen as a sign that Eons is failing; just six months ago, the social network received $22 million in funding.

Still, it’ll be interesting to see what sort of lifespan – and what sort of success – the company experiences. In the “About Us” section, founder and CEO Jeff Taylor writes, “Let’s Live to Be 100 (or die trying)!”

Eons Earns $22 Million In Funding

Doug Caverly — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 21:18:08 +0000

It’s not every day that a press release begins with the words “BOOM BOOM BOOM,” and yet that’s exactly how Eons, a media company that caters to the 50-plus crowd, chose to announce its receipt of a fresh $22 million in funding. It looks like there’s plenty o’ life in Eons yet (and hopefully in its users, as well).

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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Cranky Boomers Get A Search Engine

WebProNews Staff — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 19:48:51 +0000

The arrival of Cranky.com comes with features its founder, Jeff Taylor of Monster.com fame, thinks will be well received by the 50 and over crowd.

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:

It’s easy to type China trip’ in a popular search engine, but it can be overwhelming to navigate the 60 million results. We’ve discovered that, universally, the Eons Generation doesn’t like to wade through millions of search results. So, we created Cranky.com to engage this energetic group of Web explorers who embrace technology, including those who may not be as well-versed at Boolean searches and complex narrowing techniques as younger generations who grew up on the Web.

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.

Eons: For Life (And Death) After 50

Doug Caverly — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 20:39:01 +0000

Imagine that you’re reading through your computer’s “alerts” one morning. There’s a Windows update available, your anniversary is in one week, and, by the way, Bob died. That last piece of information would be brought to you courtesy of Eons, a new website for people “50 plus everything.”

Obituaries are just one aspect of the site. Other categories include “fun,” “love,” “money,” “body,” “goals,” and “LifeMap.” Eons also features the hilariously named cRANKy “age relevant search.” This tool proves the site isn’t for people who just spend their days waiting for a visit from the grim reaper – among the top ten searches is the Shelby Mustang.

Back to the obits section, though. The main page features notable and/or celebrity deaths. A “Local Obits (Beta Preview)” offers a searchable database of over 77 million obituaries. Members can “write the full life story,” “add a memory journal,” or “add a photo” of the deceased. There are also “Tributes,” “Loss & Grieving,” and “Send a Gift” sections, but my personal favorite is the “Way to Go” page.

“A little morbid humor never hurt anyone,” it begins. It’s very similar to the Darwin Awards – the top story right now is about “a 24-year-old who died Sunday underwent a liposuction procedure in the basement of an unlicenced doctor’s home.

Don’t write Eons off if you’re under 50 – the founder and CEO, Jeff Taylor, values you, too. In the “About Us” section, he encourages young people to join him “in being an evangelist for Eons and challenge yourself to see how many friends and family you can inspire to live the biggest life possible.” I’m not sure that I can count myself among the converted, but I like his site.

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Doug is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest eBusiness news.