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Baby Boomer site goes bust

 

 

 

BoomerTowne.com does not load on a web browser anymore.

The web site, a PC Magazine Top 10 web site for Baby Boomers, has gone bust, prompting complaints about unpaid gift card and cash rewards.

While BoomerTowne.com has gone dark, Boomertown.com loads, but every screen offers the same message about the arrival soon of a new site, though "soon" was not defined with a specific target date.

The Wisconsin Better Business Bureau is getting complaints about unpaid gift cards earned by BoomerTowne.com users, according to a story in JSOnline.com, the web site for the Journal Sentinel newspaper in Milwaukee, Wis.

BoomerTowne.com's founder, Herschel “Buzz” Peddicord, is from Wisconsin and founded his company there on the premise that Baby Boomers would flock to the site to get information on topics such as health, travel and caring for elderly parents.

Users who registered with the site earned points by reading content, posting recipes and jokes, or playing games. They could earn 1,500 points each day and ultimately cash in about 12,500 points for a $25 gift card or check card that BoomerTowne.com sent in the mail.

But the site, which launched in April 2007, stopped sending the gift cards and announced in late September that it had run out of money.

The JSOnline story details a civil suit dispute between Peddicord and company hired to handle the advertising and gift card/check card payouts.

BoomerTowne.com's troubles underscore a premise posted recently by the TechCrunch blog on Washingtonpost.com that: "Baby boomers don't want to hang out online with other baby boomers because it makes them feel old."

That observation was part of a TechCrunch post about the debut of Boomerater.com, a new Q & A web site specifically for Baby Boomers, examined here recently.

TechCrunch doubted the success of Boomerater.com when other sites devoted exclusively to Baby Boomers, such as Eons.com, were having trouble. It reported Eons.com had to reduce its workforce headcount by more than half and opened registration to everyone over 13 years old, not just Baby Boomers.