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Social networking at 50

Elinor Mills Former Staff Writer
Elinor Mills covers Internet security and privacy. She joined CNET News in 2005 after working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Portugal and writing for The Industry Standard, the IDG News Service and the Associated Press.
Elinor Mills

A social networking Web site that targets people who are 50 and older, called Eons, launched on Monday. It features an age-relevant search engine, dubbed "Cranky;" a section called "Obits," which is touted as the largest national free obituary center; a Longevity Calculator; and a way to easily change the font size of the print on the screen.

The site will conceivably compete with Third Age, which was one of the first sites to cater to the baby boomer generation online. Eons was created by Jeff Taylor, who founded job search Web site Monster.com.

I played one of the Memory Builder games and was pleased that I cut my time in half after two tries at remembering which landmarks and candy were behind which windows. But I found the Cranky search engine to be lacking--the first item under the search word "sex" was titled "Getting Pregnant: How Babies are Made."