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Web 2.0 ages: Poor old media?

(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction!  The Rolling Stones sang it, and Rolling Stone is feeling it, from the blogosphere!
Written by Donna Bogatin, Contributor
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(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction! 

The Rolling Stones sang it, and Rolling Stone is feeling it, from the blogosphere!

Rolling Stone magazine, once a must read for all music and pop-culture nuts is going to establish a social network, via GigaOm

Initial Om Malik reaction: “If this means their uglier than pooch’s-rear-end site is going to get a facelift, I am all for it.”

Malik on the “post My-Space challenges”:

"Rolling Stone clearly has its work cut out: the college crowd doesn’t care much for the brand, though formerly cool but rapidly aging hipsters still read the magazine, in a blatant attempt to capture their lost youth."

Speaking of age, the who knows how old Mathew Ingram at work labeled (senior citizen) billionaire Sam Zell an “ignoramous” last week, today he defines Rolling Stone (magazine) “geriatric” and out of touch.

Not so “out of touch” apparently, however, as Ingram congratulates himself for being the lone blogger with the fortitude to resist Rolling Stone youthful cover girl temptation:

Incidentally, I’d like a little credit for not using a cover shot in this post that has naked women in it, unlike Pete and Om and just about everyone else who has written about the Rolling Stone News.

OK, props to Matthew for his “maturity”!

What about Pete? Cashmore follows in his definitive Platial is “screwed” tradition, pronouncing a “bound to be lame” de-facto, before the fact, verdict on Rolling Stone.

But is MySpace really the only social networking play for now and ever more? Is “maturity” really a bad thing for the future of Web 2.0?

Hip, hacker promoter (but not so youthful) Paul Graham also played the who needs old folks card last week as part of his “evidence” that Microsoft is dead, daring to diss America’s beloved “Grandmas.”

Are all but “aging hipsters” hoping to “capture their lost youth,” as Malik says?

Regardless, while non twenty-somethings may not really be hip, the more mature crowd is a coveted, targeted Internet demographic, even at MySpace and Facebook.

For example, the “dead tree” old media USA Today recently reported on how not dead yet boomers are being actively solicited online, by very cool companies:

Match.com has homed in on single boomers, and they're the fastest-growing subscriber age group for the site that pairs singles. Since 2000, the number of boomers is up 350%, spokeswoman Amy Canaday says, to 1.7 million, or 11% of its membership. A current TV ad for Match.com features a widowed New York woman age 71 whose Match.com logon is DanishBeauty22.

Perhaps DanishBeauty22 will soon be social networking the Rolling Stone way!

ALSO:Web 2.0: Does ‘old media’ get it? and Web 2.0: Are Cisco, News Corp., Viacom, Gannett really clueless? 

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