Social Media, like youth, is too good to waste on the young.

We noted 18 months ago that the usage of social media was not just by The Yoof, and echoed Rory Ogilvy's bemusement that all the marketeering was aimed at the young, of whom there are fewer with less money, than on the baby boomers who are both numerous (and until recently, anyway) wealthy. News comes that the Leaders of The Social Revolution have finally sussed out where their followers really are, as the NYT notes:

A recent report from Forrester Research indicates that while it might be tempting to categorize all aging Americans as techno-dinosaurs and Luddites, more than 60 percent of baby boomers are avid consumers of social media like blogs, forums, podcasts and online videos. That’s up from roughly 40 percent a year ago.

“Traditionally, marketers have had difficulty targeting online communities where boomers are,” said Jeremiah K. Owyang, author of the report and a senior analyst with Forrester Research. But rather than shy away from targeting older consumers on the Internet as a whole, Mr. Owyang said, marketers eager to draw the eyes and dollars of baby boomers should direct more of their efforts to sites like AARP Online and social networks like Classmates Online, Facebook and LinkedIn.

You have to recall that Forrester were the same bunch who praised Facebook's 100 Year New Media Revolution to the hilt and invented the short lived Beacon Fan-sumer*, but nice to see the penny's finally dropped

* and who roundly castigated us for calling them on it at the time. To be fair, Jeremiah Owyang was only recently on their bus at the time and in my view has had a big impact on bringing 'em up to speed. You go, Jeremiah!