« Back

A month or so ago, Sharon Wienbar, a partner at the venture capital firm Scale Venture Partners, explained to me about the relative stickiness of old people. Translation: she said that older Internet users are a relatively valuable constituency because they, unlike younger users prone to flit from one fashionable site to another, are more likely to commit to a site and stay for awhile.

As an investor, she said, "no one wants to be the next Friendster."

Today, Ms. Wienbar and her partners backed up their theories with dough.

Scale Ventures said today it has led a $25 million round of funding into Waterfront Media, a collection of health, diet and fitness Web sites based in Brooklyn. Once primarily offering subscription sites, such as Southbeachdiet.com, Waterfront is now emphasizing its free, advertising supported health portal Everyday Health.

Everyday Health had 9 million unique visitors in the month of July, according to Scale, citing statistics from Comscore.

Waterfront Media said it plans to use the new funding to increase its advertising business and make acquisitions. Ms. Wienbar has joined the company’s board.

With so many Web sites aimed at the young, there is a growing number of venture capitalists investing in oldsters online. In the last year, there has been in particular a number of investments into social networking sites that are targeting people who have more of a need for Metamucil than Myspace.

The question is whether the fascination with sites aimed at older folks is creating valuations too rich to be justified by the sites’ eventual profitability. Is there a mini-bubble in senior-centric investment by venture capitalists?

« Back