Flipside Journal

Feature: Do you belong to a Social Networking site?

When I started Flipside Journey, I started with a simple premise: you can do more on-line than just shopping, surfing and sending emails. In last week’s feature, I referenced several social networking communities. As a follow-up, I spent the last week talking with their members. Each community offers a unique way to get to know people and I found that participating in the various discussion groups was the fastest way to meet people and make new friends.

Where will you spend your time on-line? Who will you share your opinions with? I had some successes and a few failures. Many of the communities I visited are just so new that you may find limited success in meeting people. Here is a sampling of the people I met.

60 Years and Older: Grandparents.com

You’ll find me on Grandparents.com but you won’t find much by way of response. I’ve learned an important lesson from this exercise — these communities were formed to serve specific audiences. You won’t find many 40, 50 and 60 year olds on FaceBook and you won’t find many members of Grandparents.com who want to speak to a 40 year old. I’ve included a link to their discussion groups. You’ll see that there are about 15 topics that were posted in March. Each group has received between 3 and 5 replies.

I did receive one reply to my query from srhcb, “Fortunately I’m in excellent health, *** knock on wood ***, so I’m not at all worried about turning 60. I am somewhat awed by the fact that when I’m 60 I may very well have another 25+ years to go. Thinking back 25 years, and how long ago that seems, worries me a lot more. It will be like spending all the time from 35 to 60 ….. AGAIN!”

50 Years and Older: Tee BeeDee.com

I had the most success with TBD.com (To Be Determined). This is one truly active community for people 40 and older. While I only spent an hour or two each night on TBD, what I found was truly outstanding. Real people. There are 432 active groups at TBD and what is unique about this site is that you can sort by most active. Your time is valuable, so find a topic that that interest you and say hello.

I started a discussion group and over 23 people responded to my topic: Turning 50 and Moving On. You can read them all and contribute a few thoughts of your own. If you get a chance, stop by and say hello — I am sure these people would love to meet you. Here are a few highlights:

“Getting closer to 50 became a little more challenging because AARP started sending me “sign-up” notices the moment I turned 48. The thoughtful person that I am, I refrained from returning their notice with a “F–K YOU! I’M ONLY 48! GET OUT A CALCULATOR AND SUBTRACT 1957 FROM THIS YEAR!!” — anyardier

“I fondly remember being 50, I think. (Yeah for age related memory loss !) I’ll be 60 this summer and am honestly not sure how that happened. For me, age is merely a state of mind. I don’t feel any older. (Matter of fact, there are parts of me I no longer can feel!)” — Janice71dg

20 Years and Older: Yelp.com

I think you’ll find that there are no shortages of places to go on-line and meet people. I mentioned FaceBook earlier, but there are others like Yelp and Going. Much like 40 year olds are not welcome on Grandparents.com, I found that I was not welcome on these sites either. I still started a discussion group at each of these sites and if you’d like to see how the younger generations view getting older — just click and read on. Ignorance is bliss.

There are several hundred social networking sites on the Internet today. Many are based on specific interests, so if you’d like to meet people based on your love of cars, reading, beer, wine, writing or any number of themes — please read this week’s Shorts and Rants for more details. If you want to read more about social networking visit Socialized Networking.