July 29, 2010 by Eddy Philipe
You may think that the silver surfer generation is just catching on to the possibilities of online networking, but not all members of the older generation are confused when it comes to harnessing the power of the internet.
This was evidenced this week when the oldest ever user of Twitter passed away peacefully in her sleep, at aged 104. Ivy Bean, a resident of a care home in Bradford, was an avid user of Twitter, and enjoyed a devoted following of 56,000 people on her Twitter account. Her micro-blogging attracted an audience from people all over the world who kept up to date with her daily tweets.
Ivy Bean has been tweeting since 2008, a year after she subscribed to Facebook and set up her account. She quickly developed a following as the oldest tweeter in town. People who regularly followed Mrs. Bean online included celebrities the singer Peter Andre, Sarah Brown and Chris Evans.
The manager of Hillside Manor, where Mrs. Bean resided, was forced to break the news of her death on the Twitter account. Pat Wright posted up a tweet to announce the death, stating “”You could not dislike Ivy. She didn’t have a bad word to say about anybody. She was a real lady, an inspiration. She loved every minute of it. The media was a big part of her life. She would not have expected to go quietly.”
Hillside were offered a computer by social services in 2007, which led to Mrs. Bean’s tweeting passion. Following her use of the machine, she was soon getting up to 16 thousand messages a day from supporters on Facebook. It was a natural progression for her to begin using Twitter when she was introduced to the site one year later.
Her last tweet, published on July 6th, read: “going to have my lunch now will be back later”.
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