Sure, Menlo Park is headquarters to the largest social network company in the world, but now there’s also a new, smaller one with the goal of building face-to-face relationships among older adults.
Picket Fence was started by Noopur Pandey, who lives in the Linfield Oaks neighborhood, and a colleage she had worked with at Yahoo!, Chung-Man Tam.
“Our initial research was done via my neighborhood NextDoor,” explained Noopur. “Our thinking was that once your kids leave schools, you lose your school network, and once you leave work, you lose your work network.
“What we found out from the older adults we contacted is that they wanted to meet people in their age group.”
Added Chung: “They’re free during the day and want to go on walks or maybe catch a movie or tour Stanford art. We also found that people wanted to get together over lunch or dinner at a restaurant.
“And we’ve been amazed at how people are opening up their homes to host events. They are so welcoming.”
In addition to Menlo Park, the Picket Fence social network is available in Palo Alto, Redwood City, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Los Altos/Los Altos Hills, Woodside, San Carlos, Belmont, San Mateo, Atherton, Portola Valley, Stanford, Saratoga, Campbell, Los Gatos, Cupertino and Santa Clara.
As the network expands geographically, the co-founders want to start linking people for educational opportunities and provide useful articles on the Picket Fence website.
“It’s really surprised us that people who live close by don’t necessarily know each other and are so happy to discover people with similar interests who live close by,” said Noopur.
Photo by Gina Hart
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