• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, September 13, 2007

Eons, a social network aimed at Baby Boomers age 50 and over, launched to great fanfare last summer, but the site apparently has fallen short of expectations. This week, reports surfaced that the site laid off 24 of its employees, accounting for one-third of its staff.

Eons, led by Monster.com founder Jeff Taylor, also reportedly is restructuring by shedding or cutting back some of its features, including its travel section and obituaries. The site had received $22 million in venture funding in March; that round was in addition to an initial $10 million last year.

Among other changes, Eons also reportedly intends to cut back on its professional editorial content in favor of beefing up user-generated material.

Despite whatever problems Eons experienced -- and it could simply be a case of the site trying to grow too quickly -- social networks overall are still thriving. In fact, the biggest networks -- MySpace and Facebook -- are getting bigger, according to a new report by Nielsen//NetRatings. MySpace drew 60.3 million visitors in August, up 23% from last year, while Facebook -- which recently opened its site to all online users -- garnered 19.2 million, up 117% from August of 2006.