July 1, 2010 by William Peebles
Recent reports on net usage and uptake suggest that a new wave of ‘Silver Surfers’ (people over the age of fifty who use the web) has increased dramatically within the past twelve months. Almost two million new internet users have joined the UK online community, and estimates suggest that over half of these users are made up of people aged fifty and over.
The rise of sites specifically catering for the older generation have proved popular, and appear to be enticing previous internet newbies to invest in the equipment to get up and running online for the first time.
UKOM, the company which measures online statistics, discovered that new users have shot up to 38.8 million, from 36.9 million twelve months ago. Most users were made up of male users over fifty, giving rise to a host of new services set up to accommodate the culture shift in attitudes to the net.
Alex Burmaster, a spokesperson for UKOM stated: “The internet is getting older in more ways than one. Not only is the medium itself maturing but the audience is shifting towards older age groups. There is a still a perception that the net is youth-centric but this is clearly not the reality.”
The ten most popular sites for people over fifty are ranked as:
• RealAge
• Flixxy
• Saga
• WA Shearings
• Fifty Plus
• FamilySearch
• Hand Picked Hotels
• Lurpak
• JacquieLawson
• Cruise.co.uk.
People who run businesses need to think of the new demographics and plan their sites to accommodate an older audience of surfers. So called ‘Silver Surfers’ are on the increase, and this means online corporations have a responsibility to open their marketing strategies to cater for this new audience of potential customers and net users. Older users now form 31% of web usage in the UK.
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