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Comment by just2n | Hacker News Reader

I think this is a bit misleading. We're drawing the conclusion from age based metrics that if a lot of young people use a service, relative to older adults, it must be "hip" or "new."

Consider Disney.com. Nothing new or hip about it. I'd bet >80% of the users are under 30.

I think this is a fairly incorrect assumption, and it feels like it's being used to justify an opinion about Facebook here by undermining how "cool" and "hip" it is.

Just come out and say what you want to say. Facebook sucks, and there's definitely nothing new about it anymore. I'll do you a favor and not try to trick you into agreeing with my opinion by making misleading correlations between it and objective data. If you disagree with me, awesome, you've found something of value in Facebook. That's great for you. I hate it. We're different! :)

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The main difference between, say, Disney and Facebook is that the former is engrained in culture from a very young age, whereas the latter officially is targeting those aged 13 and upwards.

Four year old children aren't signing up for Facebook accounts - they are, however, watching Disney on TV. Because the core Disney brand (versus the Disney conglomerate) is so heavily focused around childhood it engenders goodwill across most ages. People in their twenties and thirties respond to Disney because it reminds them of their own childhoods.

But Facebook doesn't have this luxury. Tweens and teenagers are typically brand sensitive, and coolness does matter. Your brand can be old (Nike, Apple, Adidas, etc), but it must have credibility with its target audience.

What I'm trying to say is that Disney doesn't need to be cool, because the brand is indoctrinated at an age where coolness doesn't matter. Facebook, on the other hand, targets brand and culture-aware tweens/teens. It's all about cool.

I think cool and hip is 16-25 year olds, not 10 year olds.

Potentially. So we agree there's nothing hip about Disney.com? I was trying to provide a counter example to the general thesis of the article.

The reason it really doesn't hold at all, in general, is because many websites (and particularly their contents, not necessarily the sites themselves) cater to different interests, and it's really not a surprise that people in different age groups have different interests. It's also certainly not surprising that Reddit caters to the interests of younger people more than Facebook does.

I think the point is that younger people tend to be early adopters of a new platform. It's probably easier to get middle aged people to start using a platform popular with 20somethings than the other way around.

So if one wanted to create something to rival facebook, create a place that suits the needs of the younger generation better than facebook does, the rest will eventually follow.

Even reddit seems to have a healthy following amongst "older" people.

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