Gorm's blog

Should your company have its own niche social network akin to facebook? A niche network, is a social network akin to facebook, but unlike facebook the niche network is exclusive to a group of people that share an interest. The thought is compelling; our target audience is firemen, so we make a niche network for firemen. LinkedIn could also be called a niche network, if we look at it from the perspective that it is mainly for people that are hunting for a job.

In 2007 Jason Lee Miller proclaimed the beginning of the niche network era, and he has not as such been proven wrong. Websites such as CafeMom.com, Eons.com and DailyStrength.com are still going strong, and also in 2007 Ning.com passed 100,000 niche social networks. On the other hand we have the all-purpose networks, such as facebook, MySpace, YouTube etc. On these all-purpose networks, people are divided into niche groups, so the niche networks become a part of a all-purpose network. It might be worth noting that facebook began as a niche network for Harvard students.

So what is the pro and con of niche versus all-purpose network? The niche networks can potentially give you more individual design opportunities, more control over software solutions etc., basically you do not have to stay within the restrictions set out by an all-purpose network. But the downside is that only a small part of the people we know is part of any given niche network, so we have to visit a bunch of networks in order keep track of all of our friends and interest. The opposite is currently true of the all-purpose network. So a possible prophecy for the future, well it almost the present, could be the success of Injected networks, you make websites and inject functionality from the all-purpose network into the website. It is a facebook group, with all the functionality of the facebook group, and without any of the drawbacks. This is the idea behind Google Friend Connect and Facebook connect.  There are 3 possible solutions to choose from;

1. The niche network.

2. The all-purpose network group.

3. The injected niche network.

Argh… and the whole thing is explained so much better right here

Thanks to Søren for this tip Dseneste.dk