Saga gets hip with a zone for silver surfers

It is not so much a cool internet community as a hip replacement for a social life: today, maturity’s riposte to Facebook comes of age.

If you want to get in with the gin crowd, it seems you should sign up for Saga Zone, which even in its secretive trial stages has enthralled thousands of silver surfers.

On Wednesday night, “zoners” will not be sending each other virtual vampire masks or Hallowe’en superpokes like Facebook friends. They are more likely to be swapping recipes for pumpkin soup.

But that does not mean customers of Saga, the ­insurance-to-holidays group owned by the Permira, CVC and Charterhouse private equity houses, are the shrinking violets of the web. Alongside the forums discussing topics such as “over-wintering begonias”, there are groups for “mature dating” or debating the relative sexual allure of pouches and thongs. When Zoners discuss “contacting my ex”, they are not proposing a seance.

Already, 13,000 of the 650,000 Saga magazine subscribers have signed up to the trial Zone and this vast database of experience is well ahead of its youthful counterparts in innovation.

“Very early on we had a virtual party,” Rupert Miles, chief executive, publishing, said. “About two dozen zoners arranged to ‘meet’ on­line. The girls got to­gether first to ‘dress up’. Everyone was allowed a virtual guest – Helen Mirren was popular with the men and George Clooney for the ladies – and just spent a few hours gassing about nothing, as you would at a party.”

The Saga Zone has already had its first “flashmob”, a meeting organised online, but held in real life. It was conducted, however, at a comfortable hotel in Malta.

May Murray, a 64-year-old zoner from Glasgow, said: “It has certainly expanded my social life. I switch it on every single morning. I think my children, who are in their 40s, are quite envious and would like to join, but they can’t because they are too young.”

The generation gap strikes again.