aretheydeadyet.com*
Last Friday, my mum went to a funeral. On the same day,
totally by coincidence, I updated my
friends reunited profile** . But the two things combined in my mind, curdling like orange juice and fish oil in some sort of septic tank, and out came a fully formed business proposal.
Friends Reunited (for those that don't know or cannot be bothered to find out) is a site mostly targeting 30-somethings, eager to discover what their old schoolchums are up to. You know the sort of thing "got married! had some kids! bought a house! did the washing up!". Some 20-somethings and 40-somethings also use it. Teenagers don't use it (too busy txtng thr frnds n dnldng frm
myspc), and besides which, they are have probably only just left school, and half of them have been served with asbos and have been banned from using the Internet. Old people don't use it because by the time you get into your 70s, almost
everyone has gotten married, divorced, had kids, bought a house, lost their job, married their cat, etc etc. All of these things lose their novelty once you hit retirement age, and you stop wondering what other people are doing with their lives.
Which brings me on to my fantastic business idea.
What do old people wonder, when they think about their contemporaries? I'll tell you. They think "Ooh yes, I remember Ivy. I wonder if she is dead yet?". My proposal is to assemble a huge index of elderly folk, together with their status viz a viz being alive (or otherwise). Income would be via a hefty advertising revenue from funeral directors (where else on the Internet can they advertise?), old folk's homes, and the makers of Gentleman's Relish (which is a mysterious anchovy based concoction that hasn't been made since 1953 but is still a mandatory feature in the fridges of the elderly).
So, there you have it. Stick that up your Dragon's Den.
*Rather disappointingly, the domain name has already been taken
**I can confirm that you cannot use the word "bollocks" on Friends Reunited
Posted by nikn