Monster.com founder Jeff Taylor has a new startup launching today called Eons. But don’t bother signing up unless you are at least 50 years old – this is a social network for the older crowd. Jeff himself is only 45 years old – too young to use his own service.
The idea is good – this is a huge audience with time on their hands for socializing – but the execution is bad. In many ways, Eons is embracing the hype of the new web (social networking blogs, whathaveyou) without embracing the spirit. In short, Eons is trying to do way too much and I’m at a loss as to what it actually wants to be.
They are also touting an obituary feature, which seems both gimmicky and somewhat distasteful. The section includes notable deaths and additional features like deaths near your location, all tastefully wrapped in funeral home, medicare and netflix (?) advertising.
But gimmicks aside, as I said above my main issue with the site is that they are trying to be a blog, a myspace-type home page, a to-do list and a portal for its users, among many other things. It’s too much to throw at people at once, and this age group is perfectly capable of using Yahoo for a portal, Vox for a blogging platform, etc. I would have started out with just the Myspace angle and added functionality from there as users grew, a model that has worked well for many other startups. Do one thing better than everyone else.
Successful entrepreneurs often have trouble on new startups – Eons looks to be going down that road. More on CNN Money.