When Social Media Sites Go Away

I’m just now mourning the loss of EONs, the social media site aimed at Baby Boomers. I didn’t use it all that much, but I loved the groups that talked about the iPhone and the iPad. The people my age and older using those devices were so knowledgeable and so willing to share their advice that I felt that no question was too irrelevant or just plain dumb. 

And some of them were using their iPads for very sophisticated things that I could never replicate. One of the members of the group always put up great videos he edited on the iPad. Another talked about how he used the device for many business applications.

 And one of the members of the group gave me a gift by letting Tech and the Baby Boomer use the story of her mother, severely impacted by arthritis, who could touch the iPad with her knuckles to tap out emails to her family and also to view photos from grandchildren. As you can see, these people made a real impact on me. 

So my question now is where did they go? Where are you OldMike? Louscraps? Techie44? SkeeterThompson1? LBretired? Where did all the posts go? Where are those great discussions? And the photos? I know many of the members of this group uploaded photos and videos to the site. If they were smart, they kept copies.

Officially Lori Bitter of Continuum Crew, who purchased Eons a few months ago, blamed the problem on the company’s service provider. This is what was posted on the Facebook page for the group in early May:

To our Eons members,

We know many you have all been waiting patiently for news on the future of the site. As a team, we have been working to resolve the business issues with our service provider. We have negotiated in good faith to restore the site and move forward. Unfortunately our provider is demanding a financial commitment that we cannot make at this time. We are at an impasse. While we have worked behind the scenes to try to come up with an alternative to get the site restored, none of those have worked out either. For the foreseeable future, the site will remain down.

As Matt stated before, there is no reason to worry about your personal data; it is secure. We will continue to pursue all avenues available to bring Eons back.

Also, the company Crew Media in Texas is in no way affiliated with Crew Media who owns Eons. Please stop the calls to their president immediately, as there is nothing he can do.

Thank you,
Lori and the Eons Team

If you are “into” social media, and that includes Facebook, the people on the sites become if not friends, then people you are looking forward to hearing from. You enjoy their discussions. You like what they have to say. 

Perhaps you’ve gotten involved on a gaming site where the same people play the games you like, and you’ve grown to enjoy playing with them. Or perhaps you like to talk about golf or baseball. In social media, the people who have similar interests to you become closer to you than you realize.

That is: you become close to them until the server is shut down, and all their conversations, past and those you might have had in the future, are unreachable.

For me, this brings up a larger question. What if Facebook went away? What if they closed in the middle of the night with no way for you to retrieve your Timeline? Or see your old status updates? How would all the millions of you who spend time on it day after day feel?

 

They say that nothing really goes away on the Internet. Somewhere in cyberspace those discussions about the iPad and iPhone will exist. Yet finding them will not be easy. So Lori, if you are reading this, and EONs doesn’t return, please at least make your archives accessible in some way and provide a way for the people who liked to hang out on your site to find each other.

 

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Think of the iPad for Your Elderly Parents, Boomers

I know that many Baby Boomers are still in the sandwich generation, caring for loved ones who now are elderly. It's been interesting to me to find out that some of us are using technology to enhance the quality of life of older people whose minds might be shining as brightly as ever, but who have some physical limitation that keeps them tethered to home or even in a nursing home.

In the past, it was difficult to envision packing mom or dad's expensive and fairly heavy laptop with them to go to assisted living, and impossible to figure out how to get Internet access for the laptop. However, with the advent of the iPad older people are bringing their connections to the outside world inside with them.

I recently watched a YouTube video and a news report showing a 99 year old woman with glaucoma rediscovering her love of reading and writing poetry using an iPad which lets her see the letters because of the contrasting screen. I also had been following some posts on the Boomer social networking site eons (www.eons.com) by a devoted daughter, screen named Techie44, who wanted to keep in touch with her 94 year-old mom even though the daughter would be spending the winter many miles away. I contacted Techie44 and asked if I could share her story and she graciously agreed.

In the beginning, Techie44 wasn't sure if the iPad would work for her mom, but she thought that her mother, who has rheumatoid arthritis and is in a nursing home, might be able to master it. I read through Techie44's posts as she weighed the pros and cons of getting what was then a brand new device for her mom. One thing was telling, however. Her mom was already familiar with email and wanted to have her email with her in the nursing home.

After showing her mother the family's iPad and how it worked, Techie44 ordered one for her with Wi-fi and 3G and set up her mother's email accounts to sync with the iPad. She also sent her mom some email so she could practice replying. Thinking about what would make her mom happy, she also loaded the iPad with the Christmas and classical music that her mother loves and put in pictures of the family, as well as some photos of the family camping vacations, since that's what her mom used to love to do.

Significantly, Techie44 signed up for Apple's MobileMe, an application that keeps mobile devices in sync. This was suggested to her by one of the other eons posters and it turned out to be very important. The iPad is the kind of device that can be picked up easily and just "walk out the door" of a nursing home. MobileMe has a feature called "Find my iPhone/iPad" and if someone walked away with the device, it could let Techie44 know where it is.

In an email, Techie44 told me she put a sticker on the outside of the iPad notifying everyone that it could be tracked and that she demonstrated how she could track the device to the people at the nurses station. She also told them that she would prosecute if the device were stolen.  Although she didn't tell me this, I expect she was hoping word of mouth would spread, and anyone thinking of walking away with the device would be forewarned. She also took the added precaution of selecting a pass code her mom could remember, so no one else could borrow the device.

Now I've always contended that MobileMe should be free, and not the $99/year product it is, but I'm willing to say that in this case it's worth the money. An added benefit of  MobileMe is that Techie44 can link her mom up to a "cloud" photo gallery, and the family can update and add pictures to it  from wherever they are, without having to load them directly onto the device. This was also pointed out by another eons poster.


So how is it going? Techie44's mom has arthritis, so hitting all the right icons and keys on the iPad is somewhat of a challenge, but she is managing, and enjoying the device. She does most of her typing herself but an aide helps her type long letters.  She's listened to her music on the device, but had a bit of a problem figuring out how to shut it off. Thinking ahead, Techie44 showed someone at the nursing home the ins and outs of the iPad so they could help her.

In addition, Techie44 signed her mom up for the Facebook app, so now "Granny" can follow her grand nieces and nephews on the social networking site. She also downloaded an app called iFish Pond that will help her mom pretend she is sitting by a pond when the weather gets cold.

Techie44 says that she made the right choice in getting her mom an iPad. A computer would  have had to sit on a table and her mother would have had to deliberately go to it. The iPad is easy for her mom to carry with her, and the 3G wireless solves the problem of getting Internet access in a nursing home, something that could prove to be nearly impossible.

One last thing: Techie44 says that the iPad has made a tremendous difference in the quality of her mother's life. She is connected to relatives she hadn't heard from for years and looks forward to receiving her email and photos from her family.  You can't find a more ringing endorsement than that.

I know the post above makes it look like I endorse the iPad or that I'm employed by Apple, but I assure you I am not. I simply believe that this genre of tablet has opened up a new era of computing and is beneficial for society. Many, many tablets are coming into the market soon, but right now Apple essentially stands alone. If the upcoming Linux Android tablets are as easy to use as the iPad, as this author predicts, they too will gain traction with the elderly and will add to the societal goal of helping them stay connected.

Check out the EONs iPad Discussion Board, Boomers

I've been hanging out a little with the good folks at the iPad discussion board on EONs, a social networking site aimed at Boomers.

This is a Boomer to Boomer site,  so don't expect to find your kids or any member of the younger generation crowding around this social networking water cooler. What you get are some good, solid people who are trying out this new device just like you and me. They're smart and most of them are not techies. It's great to watch them as they handle this new toy.

The discussion board has a couple of more knowledgeable members who give technical answers when needed. Overall, it is a great laboratory for how Boomers will use this device and what the potential problems are with it. I recommend everyone go to the website and give it a read. You do have to join EONs first, but if you are interested in the pros and cons of the iPad for people our age, I definitely think you should do it.

The Boomers at EONs do a great deal with the iPad. They read books on the device, but they also are trying out all of the free apps that are available for it. One of these just happens to be for a comic book company, and users can download free comic books. One member of the group (for privacy purposes I won't name user names) finds comic books "better than on paper." He calls the graphics on the iPad screen "out of this world." That's something people really ought to know.

Streaming and viewing movies and video is also a favorite activity  reported by discussion group members. Working with a screen that is only 10 inches from your face, makes movies really come alive, they report. It's a personal, intimate, experience. Movies are downloaded through Netflix, and videos through a number of apps including YouTube. A couple of people on the board figured out how to make the iPad work with their TV without much fuss, so now they can stream movies, videos etc from the iPad onto the TV.


People here are very generous with their advice. They give lists of the best apps they've found. One of the ones mentioned is Stumbleupon, (www.stumbleupon.com) an app I've been meaning to discuss on this board. You can use Stumbleupon on your computer, smart phone or iPad and it does the same thing.

You select topics that are of interest to you and start stumbling though the web. My "Stumbles" have brought me to the website of the guy who does all those great chalk drawings and to pictures from someone who does unbelievable sand sculptures.

What you'll find depends on what topics you enter. This is a really fun way to surf the web and find things you never knew about.

Some of the Eons group have run into problems with their iPad: games that stall or are hard to make work after hours of playing; apps that let you download material but don't let you delete it; apps that don't look right on the iPad, clearly just brought over to the new platform directly from the iPhone; a keyboard that is clumsy to use. They've run into the device's limitations in real world scenarios. But for the most part they are an extremely enthusiastic bunch who don't believe that this will be a device that will end up on the trash heap.